brocklebank agreed with straker that they had got to get him out of that.

it was difficult, because the thing had come upon furnival like a madness. he would have had more chance if he had been a man with a talent or an absorbing occupation, a politician, an editor, a journalist; if he had even been, brocklebank lamented, on the london borough council it might have made him less dependent on the sympathy of ruinous ladies. but the home office provided no competitive distraction.

what was worse, it kept him on the scene of his temptation.

if it hadn't been for the home office he might have gone abroad with the brocklebanks; they had wanted him to go. straker did what he could for him. he gave him five days' yachting in august, and he tried to get him away for week-ends in september; but furnival wouldn't go. then straker went away for his own holiday, and when he came back he had lost sight of furnival. so had the home office. [pg 141]

for three months furnival went under. then one day he emerged. the higginsons (mary probyn and her husband) ran up against him in piccadilly, or rather, he ran up against them, and their forms interposed an effective barrier to flight. he was looking so wretchedly ill that their hearts warmed to him, and they asked him to dine with them that evening, or the next, or—well, the next after that. he refused steadily, but mary managed to worm his address out of him and sent it on to fanny brocklebank that night.

then the brocklebanks, with prodigious forbearance and persistence, went to work on him. once they succeeded in getting well hold of him they wouldn't let him go, and between them, very gradually, they got him straight. he hadn't, fanny discovered, been so very awful; he had flung away all that he had on one expensive woman and he had lost his job. brocklebank found him another in an insurance office where fanny's brother was a director. then fanny settled down to the really serious business of settling furnival. she was always asking him down to amberley when the place was quiet, by which she meant when philippa tarrant wasn't there. she was always asking nice girls down to meet him. she worked at it hard for a whole year, and then she said that if it didn't come off that summer she would have to give it up.

the obstacle to her scheme for furny's settlement was his imperishable repugnance to the legal tie. it had become, fanny declared, a regular obsession. all this she confided to straker as she lunched with him one day in his perfectly appointed club in dover street. furny was coming down to amberley, she said, in july; and she added, "it would do you good, jimmy, to come, too."

she was gazing at him with a look that he had come [pg 142] to know, having known fanny for fifteen years. a tender, rather dreamy look it was, but distinctly speculative. it was directed to the silver streaks in straker's hair on a line with his eyeglasses, and he knew that fanny was making a calculation and saying to herself that it must be quite fifteen years or more.

straker was getting on.

a week at amberley would do him all the good in the world. she rather hoped—though she couldn't altogether promise him—that a certain lady in whom he was interested (he needn't try to look as if he wasn't) would be there.

"not philippa?" he asked wearily.

"no, jimmy, not philippa. you know whom i mean."

he did. he went down to amberley in july, arriving early in a golden and benignant afternoon. it was precisely two years since he had been there with philippa. it was very quiet this year, so quiet that he had an hour alone with fanny on the terrace before tea. brocklebank had taken the others off somewhere in his motor.

she broke it to him that the lady in whom he was interested wasn't there. straker smiled. he knew she wouldn't be. the others, fanny explained, were laurence furnival and his idea.

"his idea?"

"his idea, jimmy, of everything that's lovable."

there was a luminous pause in which fanny let it sink into him.

"then it's come off, has it?"

"i don't know, but i think it's coming."

"dear mrs. brockles, how did you manage it?"

"i didn't. that's the beauty of it. he managed it himself. he asked me to have her down." [pg 143]

she let him take that in, too, in all its immense significance.

"who is she?"

"little molly milner—a niece of nora viveash's. he met her there last winter."

their eyes met, full of remembrance.

"if anybody managed it, it was nora. jimmy, do you know, that woman's a perfect dear."

"i know you always said so."

"he says so. he says she behaved like an angel, like a saint, about it. when you think how she cared! i suppose she saw it was the way to save him."

straker was silent. he saw nora viveash as he had seen her on the terrace two years ago, on the day of philippa's arrival; and as she had come to him afterward and asked him to stand by furnival in his bad hour.

"what is it like, furny's idea?" he asked presently.

"it's rather like nora, only different. it's her niece, you know."

"if it's nora's niece, it must be very young."

"it is. it's absurdly young. but, oh, so determined!"

"has she by any chance got nora's temperament?"

"she's got her own temperament," said fanny.

straker meditated on that.

"how does it take him?" he inquired.

"it takes him beautifully. it makes him very quiet, and a little sad. that's why i think it's coming."

fanny also meditated.

"yes. it's coming. there's only one thing, jimmy. philippa's coming, too. she's coming to-day, by that four-something train."

"my dear fanny, how you do mix 'em!"

it was his tribute to her enduring quality. [pg 144]

"i asked her before i knew laurence furnival was coming."

"she knew?"

"i—i think so."

they looked at each other. then fanny spoke.

"jimmy," she said, "do you think you could make love to philippa? just, just," she entreated (when, indeed, had she not appealed to him to save her from the consequences of her indiscretions?), "until furny goes?"

straker's diplomatic reply was cut short by the appearance of laurence furnival and molly milner, nora's niece. they came down the long terrace with the sun upon them. she was all in white, with here and there a touch of delicate green. she was very young; and, yes, she was very like mrs. viveash, with all the difference of her youth and of her soul.

furnival was almost pathetically pleased to see straker there; and miss milner, flushed but serene in the moment of introduction, said that she had heard of mr. straker very often from—she hesitated, and straker saw what fanny had meant when she said that the young girl had a temperament of her own—from mr. furnival. her charming smile implied that she was aware that straker counted, and aware of all that he had done for furnival.

as he watched her he began to see how different she was from nora viveash. she was grave and extraordinarily quiet, furnival's young girl. he measured the difference by the power she had of making furnival—as straker put it—different from himself. she had made him grave and quiet, too. not that he had by any means lost his engaging spontaneity; only the spontaneous, the ungovernable thing about him was [pg 145] the divine shyness and the wonder which he was utterly unable to conceal.

it was at its height, it had spread its own silence all around it, when, in that stillness which was her hour, her moment, philippa appeared.

she came down the terrace, golden for her as it had been two years ago; she came slowly, more slowly than ever, with a touch of exaggeration in her rhythm, in her delay, in the poise of her head, and in all her gestures; the shade too much that straker had malignly prophesied for her. but with it all she was more beautiful, and, he could see, more dangerous, than ever.

she had greeted the three of them, fanny, brocklebank, and straker, with that increase, that excess of manner; and then she saw furnival standing very straight in front of her, holding out his hand.

"mr. furnival—but—how nice!"

furnival had sat down again, rather abruptly, beside molly milner, and fanny, visibly perturbed, was murmuring the young girl's name.

something passed over miss tarrant's face like the withdrawing of a veil. she was not prepared for molly milner. she had not expected to find anything like that at amberley. it was not what she supposed that furnival had come for. but, whatever he had come for, that, the unexpected, was what furnival was there for now. it was disconcerting.

philippa, in fact, was disconcerted.

all this straker took in; he took in also, in a flash, the look that passed between miss tarrant and miss milner. philippa's look was wonderful, a smile flung down from her heights into the old dusty lists of sex to challenge that young innocence. miss milner's look was even more wonderful than philippa's; grave and abstracted, it left philippa's smile lying where she [pg 146] had flung it; she wasn't going, it said, to take that up.

and yet a duel went on between them, a duel conducted with proper propriety on either side. it lasted about half an hour. philippa's manner said plainly to miss milner: "my child, you have got hold of something that isn't good for you, something that doesn't belong to you, something that you are not old enough or clever enough to keep, something that you will not be permitted to keep. you had better drop it." miss milner's manner said still more plainly to philippa: "i don't know what you're driving at, but you don't suppose i take you seriously, do you?" it said nothing at all about laurence furnival. that was where miss milner's manner scored.

in short, it was a very pretty duel, and it ended in miss milner's refusing to accompany furnival to the amberley woods and in philippa's carrying him off bodily (straker noted that she scored a point there, or seemed to score). as they went miss milner was seen to smile, subtly, for all her innocence. she lent herself with great sweetness to brocklebank's desire to show her his prize roses.

straker was left alone with fanny.

fanny was extremely agitated by the sight of furnival's capture. "jimmy," she said, "haven't i been good to you? haven't i been an angel? haven't i done every mortal thing i could for you?"

he admitted that she had.

"well, then, now you've got to do something for me. you've got to look after philippa. don't let her get at him."

"no fear."

but fanny insisted that he had seen philippa carrying furnival off under molly milner's innocent nose, and that her manner of appropriating him, too, vividly [pg 147] recalled the evening of her arrival two years ago, when he would remember what had happened to poor nora's nose.

"she took him from nora."

"my dear fanny, that was an act of the highest moral——"

"don't talk to me about your highest moral anything. i know what it was."

"besides, she didn't take him from nora," she went on, ignoring her previous line of argument. "he took himself. he was getting tired of her."

"well," said straker, "he isn't tired of miss milner."

"she's taken him off there," said fanny. she nodded gloomily toward the amberley woods.

straker smiled. he was looking westward over the shining fields where he had once walked with philippa. already they were returning. furnival had not allowed himself to be taken very far. as they approached straker saw that philippa was pouring herself out at furnival and that furnival was not absorbing any of it; he was absorbed in his idea. his idea had made him absolutely impervious to philippa. all this straker saw.

he made himself very attentive to miss tarrant that evening, and after dinner, at her request, he walked with her on the terrace. over the low wall they could see furnival in the rose garden with miss milner. they saw him give her a rose, which the young girl pinned in the bosom of her gown.

"aren't they wonderful?" said philippa. "did you ever see anything under heaven so young?"

"she is older than he is," said straker.

"do you remember when he wanted to give me one and i wouldn't take it?"

"i have not forgotten." [pg 148]

the lovers wandered on down the rose garden and philippa looked after them. then she turned to straker.

"i've had a long talk with him. i've told him that he must settle down and that he couldn't do a better thing for himself than——"

she paused.

"well," said straker, "it looks like it, doesn't it?"

"yes," said philippa. "it looks like it."

they talked of other things.

"i am going," she said presently, "to ask miss milner to stay with me."

straker didn't respond. he was thinking deeply. her face was so mysterious, so ominous, that yet again he wondered what she might be up to. he confessed to himself that this time he didn't know. but he made her promise to go on the river with him the next day. they were to start at eleven-thirty.

at eleven fanny came to him in the library.

"she's gone," said fanny. "she's left a little note for you. she said you'd forgive her, you'd understand."

"do you?" said straker.

"she said she was going to be straight and see this thing through."

"what thing?"

"furny's thing. what else do you suppose she's thinking of? she said she'd only got to lift her little finger and he'd come back to her; she said there ought to be fair play. do you see? she's gone away—to save him."

"good lord!" said straker.

but he saw.