CHAPTER XIV THE BEGINNING OF DANGER

Before a month had passed I began to feel quite settled at the cottage. My duties, though many, lay within my capacity, and were such as I found pleasure in undertaking. It was impossible for me not to see that Sir Francis Devereux had taken a great and, to others, an unaccountable fancy to me; and occasionally he made such demands upon my time that I found it hard to get through my work. But I never grudged him an hour that I could honestly spare, for every day the prejudice which I had felt against him grew less, and I began to heartily like and pity him. Perhaps this change in my feelings towards him arose chiefly from the fact that he was obviously an unhappy man. The sorrow which was embittering my father's life and clouding mine had laid its hand with almost equal bitterness upon him. And was it not natural? For more than twenty years he had never looked upon the face or heard of the son whom he had loved better than any one else in the world. The heir of Devereux, for all he knew, might have sunk to the lowest depths of vice and degradation, and yet for all that, he must bear the title and, if he chose, take up his abode in the home where his ancestors had lived with honour for many centuries, and at the very best there was a deep blot which nothing could ever efface. The descendant of a long race of mighty soldiers had been publicly pronounced a coward; and yet some day or other, by the inevitable law of nature, he would become the representative of his family. To the stern old soldier I knew well that the thought was agony, and I longed to reassure and comfort him, as I most certainly could have done. But the time was not yet come.

Naturally I saw a good deal of Maud Devereux and Lady Olive, much more of the latter than the former, for she appeared to have taken a violent fancy for Marian, and was often at the cottage. Conceit was never amongst my failings, but of course I could not help noticing that the times she chose for coming were those on which I was most likely to be at home, and generally when I returned from my day's work I found Marian and her gossiping over the fire, or if I was early, indulging in afternoon tea. She seemed determined to flirt with me, and I, willing to be amused, let her have her own way. We were both perfectly aware that the other was not in earnest, and we both—I particularly—took care not to lapse into the sentimental stage. On the whole we managed to amuse one another very well.

With Maud Devereux I made but little progress—in fact I feared sometimes that she even disliked me. She was always the same—cold, unbending, and apparently proud. It seemed impossible to win even a smile from her, and the more friendly Lady Olive and I became the more she seemed to stand aloof. Once or twice, when I had found myself riding by her side, or alone with her for a minute, I had fancied that her manner was changing a little. But before I could be sure of it, Lady Olive would bear down upon us and challenge me to a race, or make some mocking speech.

Why should it matter to me? I could not tell; yet always at such times I knew that I wished Lady Olive a little further away. Cold and disdainful though she was, a minute with her was more to me than hours with Lady Olive. And yet she was the daughter of the man whom I hated more than any living thing, and on whom I had sworn to be revenged should I fail in the great object of my life.

One evening, when, tired and dusty and stiff, after many hours' riding, I walked into Marian's little drawing-room to beg for a cup of tea before changing my things, I had a great surprise. Instead of Lady Olive, Maud Devereux was leaning back in an easy chair opposite my sister. Maud, with the proud wearied look gone from her cold blue eyes, and actually laughing a soft, pleasant laugh at one of my sister's queer speeches. I stepped forward eagerly, and there was actually a shade of something very like embarrassment in her face as she leaned forward and held out her hand.

"You are surprised to see me, Mr. Arbuthnot," she said; "I wanted Olive, and thought this the most likely place to find her."

"We haven't seen her to-day, have we, Hugh?" Marian remarked.

I assented silently, and spoke of something else. I did not want to talk about Lady Olive just then.

For more than half-an-hour we sat there sipping our tea, and chatting about the new schools which Sir Francis was building in the village, the weather, and the close approach of cub-hunting. I could scarcely believe that it was indeed Maud Devereux who sat there in my easy chair, looking so thoroughly at home and talking so pleasantly. As a rule, the only words I had been able to win from her were cold monosyllables, and the only looks half-impatient, half-contemptuous ones.

At last she rose to go, and I walked with her to the gate. It was almost dusk, and I felt that under the circumstances I might offer to walk up to the house with her. But I felt absolutely timid about proposing what with Lady Olive would have been a matter of course.

I did propose it, however, and was not a little disappointed at the passive indifference with which my escort was accepted. But what I should have resented from Lady Olive I accepted humbly from her.

Side by side we walked through the park, and I could think of nothing to say to her, nothing that I dared say. With Lady Olive there would have been a thousand light nothings to bandy backwards and forwards, but what man living would have dared to speak them to Maud Devereux? Not I, at any rate.

Once she spoke; carelessly as though for the sake of speaking.

"What spell holds Mr. Arbuthnot silent so long? A penny for your thoughts!" and I answered thoughtlessly.

"They are worth more, Miss Devereux, for they are of you. I was thinking that this was the first time I had walked alone with you."

"I am not Lady Olive," she said, coldly. "Be so good, Mr. Arbuthnot, as to reserve such speech for her."

She quickened her pace a little, and I could have bitten my tongue out for my folly. But she was not angry for long, for at the gate which led from the park into the ground she paused.

Devereux Court, with its lofty battlements and huge stacks of chimneys, towered above us—every window a burnished sheet of red fire, for the setting sun was lingering around it, and bathing it with its last parting rays as though loth to go.

"What a grand old place it is!" I said, half to myself; "I shall be sorry to leave it."

She turned round quickly, and there was actually a shade of interest in her tone.

"You are not thinking of going away, are you, Mr. Arbuthnot? I thought you got on so well with my uncle."

"Ay, too well," I answered bitterly, for I was thinking of my father and hers. "There is a great work which lies before me, Miss Devereux, and I fear that I shall do little towards it down here. Life is too pleasant altogether—dangerously pleasant."

"And yet you work hard, my uncle says," she observed; "too hard, he says, sometimes. You look tired to-night."

I might well, for I had ridden over thirty miles without a rest; but I would have ridden another thirty to have won another such glance from her sweet blue eyes.

"A moment's pleasure is worth a day's work," I said, recklessly, "and I have had nearly an hour's."

She opened the gate and passed through at once with a gesture of contempt.

"If you cannot remember, Mr. Arbuthnot, that I am not Lady Olive, and that such speeches only appear ridiculous to me, I think you had better go home," she said, coldly.

I looked down—tall though I was, it was not far to stoop—into her slightly flushed face, and through the dusky twilight I could see her eyes sparkling with a gleam of indignation. She was right to say that I had better go home—nay, I had better never have started. What had come over me that I should find my heart throbbing with pleasure to be alone with the daughter of the man whom I hated? It was treachery to my father, and, as the thought of him wandering about in his weary exile rushed into my mind, a sudden shame laid hold of me. I drew myself up, and strode along in silence, speaking never another word until we reached the gate leading on to the lawn. Then I opened it, and raising my cap with a half-mechanical gesture, stood aside to let her pass.

"Good-evening, Mr. Arbuthnot."

"Good-evening, Miss Devereux."

It might have been merely a fancy, but it seemed to me that she lingered for a second, as though expecting me to say something else. And though I was gazing fixedly over her head, I knew well that her eyes were raised to mine. But I stood silent and frowning, waiting only for her to pass on, and so she went without another word.

I watched her, fair and stately, walking with swift, graceful steps along the gravel path. Then I turned my back upon the spot where she had vanished, and, leaning against the low iron gate, let my face fall upon my folded arms.

Of all the mental tortures which a man can undergo, what is there worse than the agony of self-reproach? To be condemned by another's judgment may seem to us comparatively a light thing—but to be condemned by our own, what escape or chance of escape can there be from that! And it seemed to me as though I were arraigned before the tribunal of my own conscience. As clearly as though indeed he stood there, I saw before me the bowed form, and unhappy face of my poor father, looking steadfastly at me out of his sad blue eyes, with the story of his weary suffering life written with deep lines into his furrowed face. And then I saw myself standing at the window of my rooms in Exeter, with an oath ringing from my lips, and a passionate purpose stirring my heart, and last of all I saw myself only a few minutes ago walking by her side with stirred pulses and bounding heart—by her side, whose father, curse him! was the man above all others whom I should hate—for was it not his lying word which had driven Herbert Devereux from his home, and blasted a life more precious to me than my own! At that moment a passionate longing came upon me to stand face to face with him, the man whom we had met in the moonlight on Exmoor, and tear the truth from his lying throat.

"Mr. Arbuthnot!"

I started violently and turned round pale and agitated with the rage which was burning within me. Maud Devereux stood before me—Maud, with the pride gone out from her exquisite face, and the warming light of a kindly sympathy shining out of her glorious eyes.

"I startled you, Mr. Arbuthnot?"

"I must confess that you did, Miss Devereux. I thought that I was alone."

I had drawn myself up to my full height, and was looking steadily at her, determined that neither by word nor look, would I yield to the charm of her altered manner. It was I now who was proud and cold; she who was eager and a little nervous.

"I had a message to deliver to you, and I forgot it," she said, hurriedly. "I was to ask you to dine with us to-night."

"Does Sir Francis particularly wish it?" I asked. "Because, if not, as I have had a long day, and am rather tired——"

She interrupted me, speaking with a sudden hauteur, and with all the coldness of her former manner.

"I don't know that he particularly wishes it, but he has brought Lord Annerley home with him to talk over the Oadby Common matter, so you had better come."

Lord Annerley was the eldest son of a neighbouring landowner between whom and myself, as the agent of Sir Francis Devereux, there had arisen a friendly dispute as to the right of way over a certain common, and I knew at once that I must not miss the opportunity of meeting him.

"Very good, Miss Devereux," I answered, "I will go home and change my things at once."

"Without speaking to me?"

I turned abruptly round. Lady Olive had come softly over the smooth turf, and was looking up into my face with a mischievous smile.

"How cross you both look!" she exclaimed; "have you been quarrelling?"

"Quarrelling! Scarcely," I answered, laughing lightly. "Miss Devereux and I have no subject in common which we should be likely to discuss, far less to quarrel about. Wherever did you get such beautiful chrysanthemums, Lady Olive?"

She buried her piquant little face in the mass of white and bronze blooms, and then divided them.

"From the south garden. Aren't they lovely! See, Mr. Arbuthnot, I want you to take half of them to your sister if you don't mind. I don't think you have any cut yet, and the colours of these are so exquisite. Which do you like the better, Maud, the white or the bronze?"

"The white, of course," she answered, scarcely looking at them. "I don't care for the other colour at all."

"And I prefer it," Lady Olive went on, filling my outstretched hands. "Mr. Arbuthnot, did I gather correctly from what you were saying when I came up that you dine with us to-night?"

"I am to have that happiness, Lady Olive," I answered; "and, if I don't hurry off now, I'm afraid I shall be late."

"Then don't stop another moment," she laughed. "But, Mr. Arbuthnot——"

I halted resignedly and turned round.

"Well?"

"Oh, nothing, only Maud and I expect you to show us this evening whose taste you choose to follow."

"In what respect?" I asked.

"Why, chrysanthemums, of course! Maud has chosen white, I have chosen bronze. We shall both look out eagerly to see whose colours you wear in your buttonhole to-night, If you wear a white one, I sha'n't speak to you all the evening. Mind, I warn you."

"What nonsense you talk, Olive!" said Maud, carelessly, but with a slight flush rising into her cheeks. "As if it could make the slightest possible difference to me which colour Mr. Arbuthnot prefers in chrysanthemums!"

There was a distinct vein of contempt in her concluding sentence, and Lady Olive, noticing it, looked at us both in surprise.

"It is my positive conviction," she declared, with mock seriousness, "that, notwithstanding Mr. Arbuthnot's high-flown repudiation, you two have been quarrelling."

Maud Devereux turned impatiently away, with a scornful shrug of her shoulders, and walked slowly towards the house. Lady Olive started to follow her, but at the gate she paused.

"Mr. Arbuthnot, come here, I want to speak to you."

I retraced my steps, of course, and stood by her side.

"Well?"

She stood on tiptoe and whispered—quite an unnecessary proceeding, for Maud was a dozen yards away.

"Mr. Arbuthnot, what have you and Maud been quarrelling about?"

I turned round so abruptly that our heads knocked together and my moustache brushed her cheek.

"Mr. Arbuthnot!"

"It wasn't my fault," I assured her, truthfully.

"Sure!"

She was looking up at me with a half-coquettish, altogether inviting smile.

"Quite. Shall I show you how it happened?" I asked, stooping down till my face was very close to hers.

"What colour chrysanthemum are you going to wear this evening, Mr. Arbuthnot?" she asked, rather irrelevantly.

"Can you ask? Bronze, of course."

"Well, then—yes—I think you may show me—just so that it sha'n't happen again, you know," she added, with laughing eyes.

And so I showed her, just as a matter of precaution, and received for my reward a not very hard box on the ears, and a saucy, mock-angry backward glance as she broke away from, me and hurried after Maud. Then I strode across the park, angry with myself, yet fiercely exultant, for I knew that Maud had been lingering in the shrubbery alone, and had seen us. She would know now, if she did not before, that the grief which she must have read in my face when she had returned so unexpectedly was none of her causing, else had I never let my lips rest for a second on Lady Olive's cheek.