V.

And where was the subject of their condemnatory opinions all this while? Having secured a room at his inn, he came forth to complete the discovery of his dear mistress’s halting-place without delay. After one or two inquiries he ascertained where such a party of English were staying; and arriving at the hotel, knew at once that he had tracked them to earth by seeing the heavier portion of the Power luggage confronting him in the hall. He sent up intelligence of his presence, and awaited her reply with a beating heart.

In the meanwhile Dare, descending from his pernicious interview with Paula and the rest, had descried Captain De Stancy in the public drawing-room, and entered to him forthwith. It was while they were here together that Somerset passed the door and sent up his name to Paula.

The incident at the railway station was now reversed, Somerset being the observed of Dare, as Dare had then been the observed of Somerset. Immediately on sight of him Dare showed real alarm. He had imagined that Somerset would eventually impinge on Paula’s route, but he had scarcely expected it yet; and the architect’s sudden appearance led Dare to ask himself the ominous question whether Somerset had discovered his telegraphic trick, and was in the mood for prompt measures.

‘There is no more for me to do here,’ said the boy hastily to De Stancy. ‘Miss Power does not wish to ask me any more questions. I may as well proceed on my way, as you advised.’

De Stancy, who had also gazed with dismay at Somerset’s passing figure, though with dismay of another sort, was recalled from his vexation by Dare’s remarks, and turning upon him he said sharply, ‘Well may you be in such a hurry all of a sudden!’

‘True, I am superfluous now.’

‘You have been doing a foolish thing, and you must suffer its inconveniences.—Will, I am sorry for one thing; I am sorry I ever owned you; for you are not a lad to my heart. You have disappointed me—disappointed me almost beyond endurance.’

‘I have acted according to my illumination. What can you expect of a man born to dishonour?’

‘That’s mere speciousness. Before you knew anything of me, and while you thought you were the child of poverty on both sides, you were well enough; but ever since you thought you were more than that, you have led a life which is intolerable. What has become of your plan of alliance between the De Stancys and the Powers now? The man is gone upstairs who can overthrow it all.’

‘If the man had not gone upstairs, you wouldn’t have complained of my nature or my plans,’ said Dare drily. ‘If I mistake not, he will come down again with the flea in his ear. However, I have done; my play is played out. All the rest remains with you. But, captain, grant me this! If when I am gone this difficulty should vanish, and things should go well with you, and your suit should prosper, will you think of him, bad as he is, who first put you on the track of such happiness, and let him know it was not done in vain?’

‘I will,’ said De Stancy. ‘Promise me that you will be a better boy?’

‘Very well—as soon as ever I can afford it. Now I am up and away, when I have explained to them that I shall not require my room.’

Dare fetched his bag, touched his hat with his umbrella to the captain and went out of the hotel archway. De Stancy sat down in the stuffy drawing-room, and wondered what other ironies time had in store for him.

A waiter in the interim had announced Somerset to the group upstairs. Paula started as much as Charlotte at hearing the name, and Abner Power stared at them both.

‘If Mr. Somerset wishes to see me ON BUSINESS, show him in,’ said Paula.

In a few seconds the door was thrown open for Somerset. On receipt of the pointed message he guessed that a change had come. Time, absence, ambition, her uncle’s influence, and a new wooer, seemed to account sufficiently well for that change, and he accepted his fate. But a stoical instinct to show her that he could regard vicissitudes with the equanimity that became a man; a desire to ease her mind of any fear she might entertain that his connection with her past would render him troublesome in future, induced him to accept her permission, and see the act to the end.

‘How do you do, Mr. Somerset?’ said Abner Power, with sardonic geniality: he had been far enough about the world not to be greatly concerned at Somerset’s apparent failing, particularly when it helped to reduce him from the rank of lover to his niece to that of professional adviser.

Miss De Stancy faltered a welcome as weak as that of the Maid of Neidpath, and Paula said coldly, ‘We are rather surprised to see you. Perhaps there is something urgent at the castle which makes it necessary for you to call?’

‘There is something a little urgent,’ said Somerset slowly, as he approached her; ‘and you have judged rightly that it is the cause of my call.’ He sat down near her chair as he spoke, put down his hat, and drew a note-book from his pocket with a despairing sang froid that was far more perfect than had been Paula’s demeanour just before.

‘Perhaps you would like to talk over the business with Mr. Somerset alone?’ murmured Charlotte to Miss Power, hardly knowing what she said.

‘O no,’ said Paula, ‘I think not. Is it necessary?’ she said, turning to him.

‘Not in the least,’ replied he, bestowing a penetrating glance upon his questioner’s face, which seemed however to produce no effect; and turning towards Charlotte, he added, ‘You will have the goodness, I am sure, Miss De Stancy, to excuse the jargon of professional details.’

He spread some tracings on the table, and pointed out certain modified features to Paula, commenting as he went on, and exchanging occasionally a few words on the subject with Mr. Abner Power by the distant window.

In this architectural dialogue over his sketches, Somerset’s head and Paula’s became unavoidably very close. The temptation was too much for the young man. Under cover of the rustle of the tracings, he murmured, ‘Paula, I could not get here before!’ in a low voice inaudible to the other two.

She did not reply, only busying herself the more with the notes and sketches; and he said again, ‘I stayed a couple of days at Genoa, and some days at San Remo, and Mentone.’

‘But it is not the least concern of mine where you stayed, is it?’ she said, with a cold yet disquieted look.

‘Do you speak seriously?’ Somerset brokenly whispered.

Paula concluded her examination of the drawings and turned from him with sorrowful disregard. He tried no further, but, when she had signified her pleasure on the points submitted, packed up his papers, and rose with the bearing of a man altogether superior to such a class of misfortune as this. Before going he turned to speak a few words of a general kind to Mr. Power and Charlotte.

‘You will stay and dine with us?’ said the former, rather with the air of being unhappily able to do no less than ask the question. ‘My charges here won’t go down to the table-d’hote, I fear, but De Stancy and myself will be there.’

Somerset excused himself, and in a few minutes withdrew. At the door he looked round for an instant, and his eyes met Paula’s. There was the same miles-off expression in hers that they had worn when he entered; but there was also a look of distressful inquiry, as if she were earnestly expecting him to say something more. This of course Somerset did not comprehend. Possibly she was clinging to a hope of some excuse for the message he was supposed to have sent, or for the other and more degrading matter. Anyhow, Somerset only bowed and went away.

A moment after he had gone, Paula, impelled by something or other, crossed the room to the window. In a short time she saw his form in the broad street below, which he traversed obliquely to an opposite corner, his head somewhat bent, and his eyes on the ground. Before vanishing into the Ritterstrasse he turned his head and glanced at the hotel windows, as if he knew that she was watching him. Then he disappeared; and the only real sign of emotion betrayed by Paula during the whole episode escaped her at this moment. It was a slight trembling of the lip and a sigh so slowly breathed that scarce anybody could hear—scarcely even Charlotte, who was reclining on a couch her face on her hand and her eyes downcast.

Not more than two minutes had elapsed when Mrs. Goodman came in with a manner of haste.

‘You have returned,’ said Mr. Power. ‘Have you made your purchases?’

Without answering, she asked, ‘Whom, of all people on earth, do you think I have met? Mr. Somerset! Has he been here?—he passed me almost without speaking!’

‘Yes, he has been here,’ said Paula. ‘He is on the way from Genoa home, and called on business.’

‘You will have him here to dinner, of course?’

‘I asked him,’ said Mr. Power, ‘but he declined.’

‘O, that’s unfortunate! Surely we could get him to come. You would like to have him here, would you not, Paula?’

‘No, indeed. I don’t want him here,’ said she.

‘You don’t?’

‘No!’ she said sharply.

‘You used to like him well enough, anyhow,’ bluntly rejoined Mrs. Goodman.

Paula sedately: ‘It is a mistake to suppose that I ever particularly liked the gentleman mentioned.’

‘Then you are wrong, Mrs. Goodman, it seems,’ said Mr. Power.

Mrs. Goodman, who had been growing quietly indignant, notwithstanding a vigorous use of her fan, at this said. ‘Fie, fie, Paula! you did like him. You said to me only a week or two ago that you should not at all object to marry him.’

‘It is a mistake,’ repeated Paula calmly. ‘I meant the other one of the two we were talking about.’

‘What, Captain De Stancy?’

‘Yes.’

Knowing this to be a fiction, Mrs. Goodman made no remark, and hearing a slight noise behind, turned her head. Seeing her aunt’s action, Paula also looked round. The door had been left ajar, and De Stancy was standing in the room. The last words of Mrs. Goodman, and Paula’s reply, must have been quite audible to him.

They looked at each other much as if they had unexpectedly met at the altar; but after a momentary start Paula did not flinch from the position into which hurt pride had betrayed her. De Stancy bowed gracefully, and she merely walked to the furthest window, whither he followed her.

‘I am eternally grateful to you for avowing that I have won favour in your sight at last,’ he whispered.

She acknowledged the remark with a somewhat reserved bearing. ‘Really I don’t deserve your gratitude,’ she said. ‘I did not know you were there.’

‘I know you did not—that’s why the avowal is so sweet to me. Can I take you at your word?’

‘Yes, I suppose.’

‘Then your preference is the greatest honour that has ever fallen to my lot. It is enough: you accept me?’

‘As a lover on probation—no more.’

The conversation being carried on in low tones, Paula’s uncle and aunt took it as a hint that their presence could be spared, and severally left the room—the former gladly, the latter with some vexation. Charlotte De Stancy followed.

‘And to what am I indebted for this happy change?’ inquired De Stancy, as soon as they were alone.

‘You shouldn’t look a gift-horse in the mouth,’ she replied brusquely, and with tears in her eyes for one gone.

‘You mistake my motive. I am like a reprieved criminal, and can scarcely believe the news.’

‘You shouldn’t say that to me, or I shall begin to think I have been too kind,’ she answered, some of the archness of her manner returning. ‘Now, I know what you mean to say in answer; but I don’t want to hear more at present; and whatever you do, don’t fall into the mistake of supposing I have accepted you in any other sense than the way I say. If you don’t like such a limitation you can go away. I dare say I shall get over it.’

‘Go away! Could I go away?—But you are beginning to tease, and will soon punish me severely; so I will make my escape while all is well. It would be presumptuous to expect more in one day.’

‘It would indeed,’ said Paula, with her eyes on a bunch of flowers.

VI.

On leaving the hotel, Somerset’s first impulse was to get out of sight of its windows, and his glance upward had perhaps not the tender significance that Paula imagined, the last look impelled by any such whiff of emotion having been the lingering one he bestowed upon her in passing out of the room. Unluckily for the prospects of this attachment, Paula’s conduct towards him now, as a result of misrepresentation, had enough in common with her previous silence at Nice to make it not unreasonable as a further development of that silence. Moreover, her social position as a woman of wealth, always felt by Somerset as a perceptible bar to that full and free eagerness with which he would fain have approached her, rendered it impossible for him to return to the charge, ascertain the reason of her coldness, and dispel it by an explanation, without being suspected of mercenary objects. Continually does it happen that a genial willingness to bottle up affronts is set down to interested motives by those who do not know what generous conduct means. Had she occupied the financial position of Miss De Stancy he would readily have persisted further and, not improbably, have cleared up the cloud.

Having no further interest in Carlsruhe, Somerset decided to leave by an evening train. The intervening hour he spent in wandering into the thick of the fair, where steam roundabouts, the proprietors of wax-work shows, and fancy-stall keepers maintained a deafening din. The animated environment was better than silence, for it fostered in him an artificial indifference to the events that had just happened—an indifference which, though he too well knew it was only destined to be temporary, afforded a passive period wherein to store up strength that should enable him to withstand the wear and tear of regrets which would surely set in soon. It was the case with Somerset as with others of his temperament, that he did not feel a blow of this sort immediately; and what often seemed like stoicism after misfortune was only the neutral numbness of transition from palpitating hope to assured wretchedness.

He walked round and round the fair till all the exhibitors knew him by sight, and when the sun got low he turned into the Erbprinzen-Strasse, now raked from end to end by ensaffroned rays of level light. Seeking his hotel he dined there, and left by the evening train for Heidelberg.

Heidelberg with its romantic surroundings was not precisely the place calculated to heal Somerset’s wounded heart. He had known the town of yore, and his recollections of that period, when, unfettered in fancy, he had transferred to his sketch-book the fine Renaissance details of the Otto-Heinrichs-Bau came back with unpleasant force. He knew of some carved cask-heads and other curious wood-work in the castle cellars, copies of which, being unobtainable by photographs, he had intended to make if all went well between Paula and himself. The zest for this was now well-nigh over. But on awaking in the morning and looking up the valley towards the castle, and at the dark green height of the Konigsstuhl alongside, he felt that to become vanquished by a passion, driven to suffer, fast, and pray in the dull pains and vapours of despised love, was a contingency not to be welcomed too readily. Thereupon he set himself to learn the sad science of renunciation, which everybody has to learn in his degree—either rebelling throughout the lesson, or, like Somerset, taking to it kindly by force of judgment. A more obstinate pupil might have altogether escaped the lesson in the present case by discovering its illegality.

Resolving to persevere in the heretofore satisfactory paths of art while life and faculties were left, though every instinct must proclaim that there would be no longer any collateral attraction in that pursuit, he went along under the trees of the Anlage and reached the castle vaults, in whose cool shades he spent the afternoon, working out his intentions with fair result. When he had strolled back to his hotel in the evening the time was approaching for the table-d’hote. Having seated himself rather early, he spent the few minutes of waiting in looking over his pocket-book, and putting a few finishing touches to the afternoon performance whilst the objects were fresh in his memory. Thus occupied he was but dimly conscious of the customary rustle of dresses and pulling up of chairs by the crowd of other diners as they gathered around him. Serving began, and he put away his book and prepared for the meal. He had hardly done this when he became conscious that the person on his left hand was not the typical cosmopolite with boundless hotel knowledge and irrelevant experiences that he was accustomed to find next him, but a face he recognized as that of a young man whom he had met and talked to at Stancy Castle garden-party, whose name he had now forgotten. This young fellow was conversing with somebody on his left hand—no other personage than Paula herself. Next to Paula he beheld De Stancy, and De Stancy’s sister beyond him. It was one of those gratuitous encounters which only happen to discarded lovers who have shown commendable stoicism under disappointment, as if on purpose to reopen and aggravate their wounds.

It seemed as if the intervening traveller had met the other party by accident there and then. In a minute he turned and recognized Somerset, and by degrees the young men’s cursory remarks to each other developed into a pretty regular conversation, interrupted only when he turned to speak to Paula on his left hand.

‘Your architectural adviser travels in your party: how very convenient,’ said the young tourist to her. ‘Far pleasanter than having a medical attendant in one’s train!’

Somerset, who had no distractions on the other side of him, could hear every word of this. He glanced at Paula. She had not known of his presence in the room till now. Their eyes met for a second, and she bowed sedately. Somerset returned her bow, and her eyes were quickly withdrawn with scarcely visible confusion.

‘Mr. Somerset is not travelling with us,’ she said. ‘We have met by accident. Mr. Somerset came to me on business a little while ago.’

‘I must congratulate you on having put the castle into good hands,’ continued the enthusiastic young man.

‘I believe Mr. Somerset is quite competent,’ said Paula stiffly.

To include Somerset in the conversation the young man turned to him and added: ‘You carry on your work at the castle con amore, no doubt?’

‘There is work I should like better,’ said Somerset.

‘Indeed?’

The frigidity of his manner seemed to set her at ease by dispersing all fear of a scene; and alternate dialogues of this sort with the gentleman in their midst were more or less continued by both Paula and Somerset till they rose from table.

In the bustle of moving out the two latter for one moment stood side by side.

‘Miss Power,’ said Somerset, in a low voice that was obscured by the rustle, ‘you have nothing more to say to me?’

‘I think there is nothing more?’ said Paula, lifting her eyes with longing reticence.

‘Then I take leave of you; and tender my best wishes that you may have a pleasant time before you!.... I set out for England to-night.’

‘With a special photographer, no doubt?’

It was the first time that she had addressed Somerset with a meaning distinctly bitter; and her remark, which had reference to the forged photograph, fell of course without its intended effect.

‘No, Miss Power,’ said Somerset gravely. ‘But with a deeper sense of woman’s thoughtless trifling than time will ever eradicate.’

‘Is not that a mistake?’ she asked in a voice that distinctly trembled.

‘A mistake? How?’

‘I mean, do you not forget many things?’ (throwing on him a troubled glance). ‘A woman may feel herself justified in her conduct, although it admits of no explanation.’

‘I don’t contest the point for a moment.... Goodbye.’

‘Good-bye.’

They parted amid the flowering shrubs and caged birds in the hall, and he saw her no more. De Stancy came up, and spoke a few commonplace words, his sister having gone out, either without perceiving Somerset, or with intention to avoid him.

That night, as he had said, he was on his way to England.

VII.

The De Stancys and Powers remained in Heidelberg for some days. All remarked that after Somerset’s departure Paula was frequently irritable, though at other times as serene as ever. Yet even when in a blithe and saucy mood there was at bottom a tinge of melancholy. Something did not lie easy in her undemonstrative heart, and all her friends excused the inequalities of a humour whose source, though not positively known, could be fairly well guessed.

De Stancy had long since discovered that his chance lay chiefly in her recently acquired and fanciful predilection d’artiste for hoary mediaeval families with ancestors in alabaster and primogenitive renown. Seeing this he dwelt on those topics which brought out that aspect of himself more clearly, talking feudalism and chivalry with a zest that he had never hitherto shown. Yet it was not altogether factitious. For, discovering how much this quondam Puritan was interested in the attributes of long-chronicled houses, a reflected interest in himself arose in his own soul, and he began to wonder why he had not prized these things before. Till now disgusted by the failure of his family to hold its own in the turmoil between ancient and modern, he had grown to undervalue its past prestige; and it was with corrective ardour that he adopted while he ministered to her views.

Henceforward the wooing of De Stancy took the form of an intermittent address, the incidents of their travel furnishing pegs whereon to hang his subject; sometimes hindering it, but seldom failing to produce in her a greater tolerance of his presence. His next opportunity was the day after Somerset’s departure from Heidelberg. They stood on the great terrace of the Schloss-Garten, looking across the intervening ravine to the north-east front of the castle which rose before them in all its customary warm tints and battered magnificence.

‘This is a spot, if any, which should bring matters to a crisis between you and me,’ he asserted good-humouredly. ‘But you have been so silent to-day that I lose the spirit to take advantage of my privilege.’

She inquired what privilege he spoke of, as if quite another subject had been in her mind than De Stancy.

‘The privilege of winning your heart if I can, which you gave me at Carlsruhe.’

‘O,’ she said. ‘Well, I’ve been thinking of that. But I do not feel myself absolutely bound by the statement I made in that room; and I shall expect, if I withdraw it, not to be called to account by you.’

De Stancy looked rather blank.

‘If you recede from your promise you will doubtless have good reason. But I must solemnly beg you, after raising my hopes, to keep as near as you can to your word, so as not to throw me into utter despair.’

Paula dropped her glance into the Thier-Garten below them, where gay promenaders were clambering up between the bushes and flowers. At length she said, with evident embarrassment, but with much distinctness: ‘I deserve much more blame for what I have done than you can express to me. I will confess to you the whole truth. All that I told you in the hotel at Carlsruhe was said in a moment of pique at what had happened just before you came in. It was supposed I was much involved with another man, and circumstances made the supposition particularly objectionable. To escape it I jumped at the alternative of yourself.’

‘That’s bad for me!’ he murmured.

‘If after this avowal you bind me to my words I shall say no more: I do not wish to recede from them without your full permission.’

‘What a caprice! But I release you unconditionally,’ he said. ‘And I beg your pardon if I seemed to show too much assurance. Please put it down to my gratified excitement. I entirely acquiesce in your wish. I will go away to whatever place you please, and not come near you but by your own permission, and till you are quite satisfied that my presence and what it may lead to is not undesirable. I entirely give way before you, and will endeavour to make my future devotedness, if ever we meet again, a new ground for expecting your favour.’

Paula seemed struck by the generous and cheerful fairness of his remarks, and said gently, ‘Perhaps your departure is not absolutely necessary for my happiness; and I do not wish from what you call caprice—’

‘I retract that word.’

‘Well, whatever it is, I don’t wish you to do anything which should cause you real pain, or trouble, or humiliation.’

‘That’s very good of you.’

‘But I reserve to myself the right to accept or refuse your addresses—just as if those rash words of mine had never been spoken.’

‘I must bear it all as best I can, I suppose,’ said De Stancy, with melancholy humorousness.

‘And I shall treat you as your behaviour shall seem to deserve,’ she said playfully.

‘Then I may stay?’

‘Yes; I am willing to give you that pleasure, if it is one, in return for the attentions you have shown, and the trouble you have taken to make my journey pleasant.’

She walked on and discovered Mrs. Goodman near, and presently the whole party met together. De Stancy did not find himself again at her side till later in the afternoon, when they had left the immediate precincts of the castle and decided on a drive to the Konigsstuhl.

The carriage, containing only Mrs. Goodman, was driven a short way up the winding incline, Paula, her uncle, and Miss De Stancy walking behind under the shadow of the trees. Then Mrs. Goodman called to them and asked when they were going to join her.

‘We are going to walk up,’ said Mr. Power.

Paula seemed seized with a spirit of boisterousness quite unlike her usual behaviour. ‘My aunt may drive up, and you may walk up; but I shall run up,’ she said. ‘See, here’s a way.’ She tripped towards a path through the bushes which, instead of winding like the regular track, made straight for the summit.

Paula had not the remotest conception of the actual distance to the top, imagining it to be but a couple of hundred yards at the outside, whereas it was really nearer a mile, the ascent being uniformly steep all the way. When her uncle and De Stancy had seen her vanish they stood still, the former evidently reluctant to forsake the easy ascent for a difficult one, though he said, ‘We can’t let her go alone that way, I suppose.’

‘No, of course not,’ said De Stancy.

They then followed in the direction taken by Paula, Charlotte entering the carriage. When Power and De Stancy had ascended about fifty yards the former looked back, and dropped off from the pursuit, to return to the easy route, giving his companion a parting hint concerning Paula. Whereupon De Stancy went on alone. He soon saw Paula above him in the path, which ascended skyward straight as Jacob’s Ladder, but was so overhung by the brushwood as to be quite shut out from the sun. When he reached her side she was moving easily upward, apparently enjoying the seclusion which the place afforded.

‘Is not my uncle with you?’ she said, on turning and seeing him.

‘He went back,’ said De Stancy.

She replied that it was of no consequence; that she should meet him at the top, she supposed.

Paula looked up amid the green light which filtered through the leafage as far as her eyes could stretch. But the top did not appear, and she allowed De Stancy to get in front. ‘It did not seem such a long way as this, to look at,’ she presently said.

He explained that the trees had deceived her as to the real height, by reason of her seeing the slope foreshortened when she looked up from the castle. ‘Allow me to help you,’ he added.

‘No, thank you,’ said Paula lightly; ‘we must be near the top.’

They went on again; but no Konigsstuhl. When next De Stancy turned he found that she was sitting down; immediately going back he offered his arm. She took it in silence, declaring that it was no wonder her uncle did not come that wearisome way, if he had ever been there before.

De Stancy did not explain that Mr. Power had said to him at parting, ‘There’s a chance for you, if you want one,’ but at once went on with the subject begun on the terrace. ‘If my behaviour is good, you will reaffirm the statement made at Carlsruhe?’

‘It is not fair to begin that now!’ expostulated Paula; ‘I can only think of getting to the top.’

Her colour deepening by the exertion, he suggested that she should sit down again on one of the mossy boulders by the wayside. Nothing loth she did, De Stancy standing by, and with his cane scratching the moss from the stone.

‘This is rather awkward,’ said Paula, in her usual circumspect way. ‘My relatives and your sister will be sure to suspect me of having arranged this scramble with you.’

‘But I know better,’ sighed De Stancy. ‘I wish to Heaven you had arranged it!’

She was not at the top, but she took advantage of the halt to answer his previous question. ‘There are many points on which I must be satisfied before I can reaffirm anything. Do you not see that you are mistaken in clinging to this idea?—that you are laying up mortification and disappointment for yourself?’

‘A negative reply from you would be disappointment, early or late.’

‘And you prefer having it late to accepting it now? If I were a man, I should like to abandon a false scent as soon as possible.’

‘I suppose all that has but one meaning: that I am to go.’

‘O no,’ she magnanimously assured him, bounding up from her seat; ‘I adhere to my statement that you may stay; though it is true something may possibly happen to make me alter my mind.’

He again offered his arm, and from sheer necessity she leant upon it as before.

‘Grant me but a moment’s patience,’ he began.

‘Captain De Stancy! Is this fair? I am physically obliged to hold your arm, so that I MUST listen to what you say!’

‘No, it is not fair; ‘pon my soul it is not!’ said De Stancy. ‘I won’t say another word.’

He did not; and they clambered on through the boughs, nothing disturbing the solitude but the rustle of their own footsteps and the singing of birds overhead. They occasionally got a peep at the sky; and whenever a twig hung out in a position to strike Paula’s face the gallant captain bent it aside with his stick. But she did not thank him. Perhaps he was just as well satisfied as if she had done so.

Paula, panting, broke the silence: ‘Will you go on, and discover if the top is near?’

He went on. This time the top was near. When he returned she was sitting where he had left her among the leaves. ‘It is quite near now,’ he told her tenderly, and she took his arm again without a word. Soon the path changed its nature from a steep and rugged watercourse to a level green promenade.

‘Thank you, Captain De Stancy,’ she said, letting go his arm as if relieved.

Before them rose the tower, and at the base they beheld two of their friends, Mr. Power being seen above, looking over the parapet through his glass.

‘You will go to the top now?’ said De Stancy.

‘No, I take no interest in it. My interest has turned to fatigue. I only want to go home.’

He took her on to where the carriage stood at the foot of the tower, and leaving her with his sister ascended the turret to the top. The landscape had quite changed from its afternoon appearance, and had become rather marvellous than beautiful. The air was charged with a lurid exhalation that blurred the extensive view. He could see the distant Rhine at its junction with the Neckar, shining like a thread of blood through the mist which was gradually wrapping up the declining sun. The scene had in it something that was more than melancholy, and not much less than tragic; but for De Stancy such evening effects possessed little meaning. He was engaged in an enterprise that taxed all his resources, and had no sentiments to spare for air, earth, or skies.

‘Remarkable scene,’ said Power, mildly, at his elbow.

‘Yes; I dare say it is,’ said De Stancy. ‘Time has been when I should have held forth upon such a prospect, and wondered if its livid colours shadowed out my own life, et caetera, et caetera. But, begad, I have almost forgotten there’s such a thing as Nature, and I care for nothing but a comfortable life, and a certain woman who does not care for me!... Now shall we go down?’

VIII.

It was quite true that De Stancy at the present period of his existence wished only to escape from the hurly-burly of active life, and to win the affection of Paula Power. There were, however, occasions when a recollection of his old renunciatory vows would obtrude itself upon him, and tinge his present with wayward bitterness. So much was this the case that a day or two after they had arrived at Mainz he could not refrain from making remarks almost prejudicial to his cause, saying to her, ‘I am unfortunate in my situation. There are, unhappily, worldly reasons why I should pretend to love you, even if I do not: they are so strong that, though really loving you, perhaps they enter into my thoughts of you.’

‘I don’t want to know what such reasons are,’ said Paula, with promptness, for it required but little astuteness to discover that he alluded to the alienated Wessex home and estates. ‘You lack tone,’ she gently added: ‘that’s why the situation of affairs seems distasteful to you.’

‘Yes, I suppose I am ill. And yet I am well enough.’

These remarks passed under a tree in the public gardens during an odd minute of waiting for Charlotte and Mrs. Goodman; and he said no more to her in private that day. Few as her words had been he liked them better than any he had lately received. The conversation was not resumed till they were gliding ‘between the banks that bear the vine,’ on board one of the Rhine steamboats, which, like the hotels in this early summer time, were comparatively free from other English travellers; so that everywhere Paula and her party were received with open arms and cheerful countenances, as among the first swallows of the season.

The saloon of the steamboat was quite empty, the few passengers being outside; and this paucity of voyagers afforded De Stancy a roomy opportunity.

Paula saw him approach her, and there appearing in his face signs that he would begin again on the eternal subject, she seemed to be struck with a sense of the ludicrous.

De Stancy reddened. ‘Something seems to amuse you,’ he said.

‘It is over,’ she replied, becoming serious.

‘Was it about me, and this unhappy fever in me?’

‘If I speak the truth I must say it was.’

‘You thought, “Here’s that absurd man again, going to begin his daily supplication.”’

‘Not “absurd,”’ she said, with emphasis; ‘because I don’t think it is absurd.’

She continued looking through the windows at the Lurlei Heights under which they were now passing, and he remained with his eyes on her.

‘May I stay here with you?’ he said at last. ‘I have not had a word with you alone for four-and-twenty hours.’

‘You must be cheerful, then.’

‘You have said such as that before. I wish you would say “loving” instead of “cheerful.”’

‘Yes, I know, I know,’ she responded, with impatient perplexity. ‘But why must you think of me—me only? Is there no other woman in the world who has the power to make you happy? I am sure there must be.’

‘Perhaps there is; but I have never seen her.’

‘Then look for her; and believe me when I say that you will certainly find her.’

He shook his head.

‘Captain De Stancy, I have long felt for you,’ she continued, with a frank glance into his face. ‘You have deprived yourself too long of other women’s company. Why not go away for a little time? and when you have found somebody else likely to make you happy, you can meet me again. I will see you at your father’s house, and we will enjoy all the pleasure of easy friendship.’

‘Very correct; and very cold, O best of women!’

‘You are too full of exclamations and transports, I think!’

They stood in silence, Paula apparently much interested in the manoeuvring of a raft which was passing by. ‘Dear Miss Power,’ he resumed, ‘before I go and join your uncle above, let me just ask, Do I stand any chance at all yet? Is it possible you can never be more pliant than you have been?’

‘You put me out of all patience!’

‘But why did you raise my hopes? You should at least pity me after doing that.’

‘Yes; it’s that again! I unfortunately raised your hopes because I was a fool—was not myself that moment. Now question me no more. As it is I think you presume too much upon my becoming yours as the consequence of my having dismissed another.’

‘Not on becoming mine, but on listening to me.’

‘Your argument would be reasonable enough had I led you to believe I would listen to you—and ultimately accept you; but that I have not done. I see now that a woman who gives a man an answer one shade less peremptory than a harsh negative may be carried beyond her intentions, and out of her own power before she knows it.’

‘Chide me if you will; I don’t care!’

She looked steadfastly at him with a little mischief in her eyes. ‘You DO care,’ she said.

‘Then why don’t you listen to me? I would not persevere for a moment longer if it were against the wishes of your family. Your uncle says it would give him pleasure to see you accept me.’

‘Does he say why?’ she asked thoughtfully.

‘Yes; he takes, of course, a practical view of the matter; he thinks it commends itself so to reason and common sense that the owner of Stancy Castle should become a member of the De Stancy family.’

‘Yes, that’s the horrid plague of it,’ she said, with a nonchalance which seemed to contradict her words. ‘It is so dreadfully reasonable that we should marry. I wish it wasn’t!’

‘Well, you are younger than I, and perhaps that’s a natural wish. But to me it seems a felicitous combination not often met with. I confess that your interest in our family before you knew me lent a stability to my hopes that otherwise they would not have had.’

‘My interest in the De Stancys has not been a personal interest except in the case of your sister,’ she returned. ‘It has been an historical interest only; and is not at all increased by your existence.’

‘And perhaps it is not diminished?’

‘No, I am not aware that it is diminished,’ she murmured, as she observed the gliding shore.

‘Well, you will allow me to say this, since I say it without reference to your personality or to mine—that the Power and De Stancy families are the complements to each other; and that, abstractedly, they call earnestly to one another: “How neat and fit a thing for us to join hands!”’

Paula, who was not prudish when a direct appeal was made to her common sense, answered with ready candour: ‘Yes, from the point of view of domestic politics, that undoubtedly is the case. But I hope I am not so calculating as to risk happiness in order to round off a social idea.’

‘I hope not; or that I am either. Still the social idea exists, and my increased years make its excellence more obvious to me than to you.’

The ice once broken on this aspect of the question, the subject seemed further to engross her, and she spoke on as if daringly inclined to venture where she had never anticipated going, deriving pleasure from the very strangeness of her temerity: ‘You mean that in the fitness of things I ought to become a De Stancy to strengthen my social position?’

‘And that I ought to strengthen mine by alliance with the heiress of a name so dear to engineering science as Power.’

‘Well, we are talking with unexpected frankness.’

‘But you are not seriously displeased with me for saying what, after all, one can’t help feeling and thinking?’

‘No. Only be so good as to leave off going further for the present. Indeed, of the two, I would rather have the other sort of address. I mean,’ she hastily added, ‘that what you urge as the result of a real affection, however unsuitable, I have some remote satisfaction in listening to—not the least from any reciprocal love on my side, but from a woman’s gratification at being the object of anybody’s devotion; for that feeling towards her is always regarded as a merit in a woman’s eye, and taken as a kindness by her, even when it is at the expense of her convenience.’

She had said, voluntarily or involuntarily, better things than he expected, and perhaps too much in her own opinion, for she hardly gave him an opportunity of replying.

They passed St. Goar and Boppard, and when steering round the sharp bend of the river just beyond the latter place De Stancy met her again, exclaiming, ‘You left me very suddenly.’

‘You must make allowances, please,’ she said; ‘I have always stood in need of them.’

‘Then you shall always have them.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ she said quickly; but Paula was not to be caught again, and kept close to the side of her aunt while they glided past Brauback and Oberlahnstein. Approaching Coblenz her aunt said, ‘Paula, let me suggest that you be not so much alone with Captain De Stancy.’

‘And why?’ said Paula quietly.

‘You’ll have plenty of offers if you want them, without taking trouble,’ said the direct Mrs. Goodman. ‘Your existence is hardly known to the world yet, and Captain De Stancy is too near middle-age for a girl like you.’ Paula did not reply to either of these remarks, being seemingly so interested in Ehrenbreitstein’s heights as not to hear them.