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  "She was going on and on, all the way to the village, about how splendid it will be when Jane is a marchioness, and how of course Lyndale will do something to see to it that those dreadful moneylenders don't turn us all out of Brightleaves," she said. "She says he is fearfully rich. You know, Gwen," she continued, very earnestly for her, "things really must be in a frightful state when Mama begins worrying about them. All the same, Jane can't be expected to sell herself for Lyndale's gold—can she?"

  Gwendolen said dampeningly not to be so melodramatic.

  CHAPTER THREE

  SHE WAS OBLIGED to admit to herself, however, that it was a, problem, and one that she was sure had occurred very forcibly to sensible, dutiful Jane, who knew just as well as Gwendolen that their father was quite incapable of managing Brightleaves in such a way as to put it upon a paying basis after the near-disaster of a few years back. All he had done with the considerable sum of money that Messrs. Smith and Brown had obligingly provided him with at that time had been to settle the most pressing debts; the rest had gone into the refurbishing of the stables and the acquisition of several new racehorses.

  Mr. Quarters, who had a very sanguine nature where horses were concerned, insisted that these were "investments" which, in the long run, would be far safer and more profitable than if he had placed the money in the Funds; but Gwendolen and Jane had more than once discussed the unlikelihood that such a happy outcome would occur, and there was every probability now, Gwendolen was inclined to think after her meeting with Lyndale, that if Jane were to accept the Marquis's suit, it would be only because she was aware that marriage with him would be the one practical means of preserving the entire family from ruin.

  She was soon to have the opportunity of testing this theory, for shortly after nuncheon Lady Priscilla's travelling-chaise, bearing Jane herself under the chaperonage of Lady Priscilla's smart abigail, drew up before the front door of Brightleaves. Lady Otilia, who, since her return from her morning calls, had been awaiting this moment with great impatience, at once bore her daughter off to the drawing room, exclaiming as she did so upon the extraordinary improvement in her appearance that had taken place since her departure for London. Jane had left Gloucestershire, she declared, a beautiful young girl, but she had returned the young lady of fashion, complete in every modish detail.

  And, indeed, the elegant little creature, in her China blue pelissette and ostrich-plumed bonnet of a matching colour, who now trod into the shabby drawing room looked a delicate exotic, as out of place there as an orchid in a bouquet of daisies.

  Jane Quarters was indubitably a beautiful girl. Her eyes were azure blue, her ringletted hair a fashionable, dusky black, her features regular, but without the coldness of classical perfection, and her figure supple and exquisitely formed. Added to all this was an amiable disposition and an understanding quite sufficient to cope with the problems with which young ladies are ordinarily confronted; it was easy to see, Gwendolen thought, why Lyndale, faced with no need to seek fortune in marriage and apparently bent only upon finding an attractive, conformable wife, had fixed his choice upon her. No doubt, she considered with a worldly-wise knowledge based on her perusal of Lord Byron's more colourful descriptions of gentlemen who had led highly adventurous lives in exotic climes, men such as Lyndale, jaded with alluring Eastern houris, would savour the change to a normal, well-conducted English young lady such as Jane; but to see Jane sacrifice herself in such a marriage was beginning to seem quite as unthinkable to her as it already did to Campaspe.

  Of course, Lady Otilia, unaware of the complexities of the situation, had no such scruples, and her very first remark to Jane, once she had done exclaiming over her improved appearance and had uttered a hasty and obviously perfunctory enquiry concerning Lady Priscilla's health, was, "And so, my dear, dear Jane, you are to be a marchioness! I scarcely dared hope, when I sent you off to London, for such a glorious outcome for my dreams for you! We have all been in transports since your aunt's letter arrived this morning—not your papa, of course, for he does not know of it as yet, having most vexingly gone to Cheltenham before the post came—but I am sure he will be as soon as he learns that Lyndale is to offer for you—"

  Gwendolen, who had been watching her sister's face closely during this enthusiastic speech, saw the colour rise suddenly in Jane's cheeks and heard her utter a slight gasp.

  "Oh!" she said rather faintly, after a moment. "It is—it is quite determined then, ma'am? I did not know—Aunt did not tell me, before I left London—"

  “No, of course she did not, for she did not know it herself at the time," Lady Otilia said, quite oblivious to the agitation in her daughter's voice. "She sent an express off to me directly Lord Lyndale had spoken to her, which was just after you had set out on your journey. Lyndale is to come down to Beauworth without delay, she says; I daresay he will arrive in this part of the country within a day or two."

  "He is here now," interjected Gwendolen, who had not previously described her meeting with Lyndale to her mother. Lady Otilia looked at her in some surprise. "We met quite by accident," Gwendolen added hastily, and went on to turn the subject as quickly as she could, which was not difficult, for Lady Otilia was far more interested in learning of Jane's activities in London than she was in hearing of her eldest daughter's meeting with Lord Lyndale.

  It was almost dinnertime before Gwendolen and Campaspe could at last succeed in getting Jane to themselves. She had been reluctantly released by Lady Otilia so that she could change out of her travelling costume; but Gwendolen and Campaspe, waylaying her on the stairs, dragged her instead up to the old schoolroom at the top of the house and made her sit down upon a dilapidated sofa there.

  “We want to know," Campaspe said, plumping herself down upon a stool directly opposite her sister and frowning at her portentously, her chin in her cupped hands and her elbows on her knees. "Do you really want to marry Lyndale? Aren't you in love with Alain anymore?"

  To Campaspe's obvious satisfaction, this blunt interrogatory caused Jane to burst immediately into tears.

  "There! Didn't I tell you?" Campaspe exclaimed, turning triumphantly to Gwendolen.

  Gwendolen, however, with a reproving glance at her, sat down beside Jane upon the sofa and put her arms about her.

  "There, there—don't cry, my dearest," she said soothingly. "If you don't wish to marry the man, you needn't, of course. After all, he hasn't even offered for you yet."

  "But he w-will!" Jane sobbed. "Aunt s-said he would—only I d-didn't believe her, because he never showed the least s-sign of being in love with me—"

  "Bless you, child, men like Lyndale needn't be in love with someone to offer marriage to her!" Gwendolen said practically. "They merely want a suitable wife, beautiful, if possible—and you are quite beautiful, unfortunately. If you were plain, now, you could marry Alain and no one would think twice about your throwing yourself away on a penniless Frenchman."

  "No, I couldn't—marry Alain, that is," Jane said, drying her eyes determinedly as her sensible nature reasserted itself. "He hasn't any money—nor have I—and we should starve—"

  "Fiddle!" said Campaspe briskly. "Papa hasn't any money and we manage to live somehow. Though it is rather dreary to be poor," she added, looking round with disfavour at the forlorn schoolroom. "I've told Neil he must become a general soon, or at least a colonel, but he says it will be rather difficult now, since there isn't a war any longer. But I should marry him anyway," she declared defiantly, "even if he stayed a lieutenant for the rest of his life. And you must marry Alain, of course, Jane."

  Jane shook her head, smoothing her handkerchief out upon her lap with great attention.

  "No," she said after a moment, in a mournful voice. "I can never marry him. I must think of my duty."

  "Your duty?" Campaspe stared at her. "Oh, Jane, don't be a ninnyhammer!" she said impatiently. "You sound like the heroine in one of those revolting novels where everyone is too dreadfully noble, except the ones who are terribly wicked—'<
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  "But I must think of it," Jane persisted, tears welling up once more in her eyes. "I don't know how many times Aunt has told me that Mama has placed all her dependence upon my making an advantageous marriage—and you see how overjoyed she is, now that she thinks I am to marry Lord Lyndale! I couldn't bear to disappoint her—"

  “Well, you must disappoint someone, certainly," Gwendolen said, "either her or Alain. You will have to choose which." And then, seeing the woebegone face Jane turned upon her, she went on, with a slight shrug, "Not that it appears to me that the choice should present the least difficulty. The matter might stand differently if you hadn't formed a lasting attachment for Alain—though I do think you would find being married to Lord Lyndale very uncomfortable, even if you weren't in love with someone else. But, as it is, you certainly cannot accept an offer from him, no matter how happy it would make Mama."

  Jane shook her head once more. She had, as Gwendolen was well aware, a very persuadable nature, which made it ordinarily the easiest matter in the world to manage her; but there had always been a point, even when she had been a small girl, at which her better self came into the picture, and then she could be quite maddeningly unreasonable, from the point of view of people with the usual human imperfections. Gwendolen saw with a sense of strong foreboding that she had the look of confronting the scruples of that other self now.

  "But I couldn't," she repeated in a gentle, earnest, obstinate voice. "I mean, I couldn't refuse Lord Lyndale, and disappoint Mama so, and bring all of you to ruin, when it is in my power to save you—"

  "Stuff!" said Campaspe loudly. "We don't wish to be saved—do we, Gwen? Not if it means you will be obliged to marry a perfectly horrid man like Lord Lyndale."

  Jane said pensively that he wasn't really horrid. "His manners are a—a trifle abrupt, perhaps," she said. "But Aunt says one becomes accustomed to a gentleman's little peculiarities when one is married to him—"

  "Well, she has never become accustomed to Uncle Horace's little peculiarities,'" Gwendolen said frankly. "They quarrel like a pair of monkeys, as you very well know. But that is neither here nor there. The point is, Cammie and I don't in the least wish you to sacrifice yourself for us, because our husbands will do very well in the world without Lord Lyndale's interest; and as for Papa, I am sure he will say the same, if you tell him you are in love with someone else—"

  "But I couldn't do that!" said Jane, looking terrified at the very thought. "You know what strong views he has about the French! He would never consent to my marrying Alain, even if Lord Lyndale were not to make me an offer!"

  Gwendolen and Campaspe gazed at each other in silent exasperation. It was perfectly plain, their eyes said eloquently, that Jane had got into one of her muddleheaded states, and that they would be obliged to rescue her from the disaster of a marriage with Lyndale without her lifting a hand to save herself.

  "She really is the most nonsensical girl!" Gwendolen said, when she and Campaspe were alone together in the schoolroom, Jane having finally been permitted to go to her own bedchamber to change her frock. "If she were the romantic sort, it might be all very well for her to marry Lyndale, and moon about concealing a hopeless passion for Alain for years and years; I believe there are females who quite enjoy that kind of thing—at least, one reads about them in novels. But Jane is not romantic in the least. She is a respectable little creature, who would be perfectly horrified with herself if she found herself married and in love with a man who wasn't her husband. And she is in love with Alain still; it's as plain as a pikestaff. So what are we to do about her?"

  Campaspe said rather doubtfully that they might tell Lord Lyndale that she was in love with someone else.

  "Good heavens, no! We can't do that!" Gwendolen said, turning from one of the small windows that looked out to the west of the house, over the green-grey wold rippling off into the blue distance and the silver thread of the stream coveted by the Duke of Tardiff. "He might call Alain out."

  "Oh! Do you really think so?" Campaspe, although not in the least a bloodthirsty girl, could not prevent an anticipatory gleam from appearing in her eyes at the prospect of so romantic an occurrence as a duel, especially since she saw it in her imagination as a quite outmoded conflict with flashing, thrusting swords, instead of the deadlier but far less picturesque modern combat with firearms. "Do you really think he would be likely to do that?" she demanded.

  "I haven't the least notion what he would be likely to do," Gwendolen said, "except that it would be something that no one expected, and probably quite upsetting. So I don't think we ought to bring Alain into this. We shall simply have to manage it ourselves, because Jane won't, and Mama won't, and Papa—" She broke off suddenly, looking thoughtful. "Papa—" she repeated slowly, and then added, with a dreamy upward glance that gave her an angelically innocent appearance but would have deceived no one who knew her well, "after all, Lyndale is the Duke's cousin, you know. I don't think Papa would take kindly to that connexion."

  Campaspe flew at her and gave her an enthusiastic hug. "Of course—the very thing!" she exclaimed. "If we keep harping on that, he is bound to get up on his high ropes and say Jane can't marry Lyndale! You are clever, Gwen!"

  But they were reckoning without their papa's ruling passion. Mr. Quarters, coming in just at dinnertime from a most satisfactory day in Cheltenham, where he had concluded what he appeared to consider a highly advantageous bargain involving the sale of one horse, the purchase of two others, and an arrangement to have a stallion with a stupendous pedigree become the (at least prospective) father of a gifted colt or filly by Mr. Quarters's favourite mare—all of which matters he discussed with the greatest freedom before his daughters— evidently felt the subject of Jane's forthcoming betrothal to be an affair of secondary importance when it was first broached to him over the neat's tongue and cauliflowers.

  "Lyndale? I don't know any Lyndale," he said summarily, as if that disposed of the topic. And, when Lady Otilia persisted, "A marquis, eh?" he said. "I've never held with marquisates: a jumped-up sort of title. Earls and barons were good enough for us in the old days."

  Mr. Quarters was a tall, bony man, with the lean, rufous face and piercing blue eyes of the born enthusiast He was, in his way, a good-humoured man when not crossed, and had always been much in favour with the eldest and youngest of his daughters; but Jane, like Lady Otilia, felt about him much as her superstitious Stone Age ancestors might have felt about the unpredictable forces of Nature—as an entity sometimes benignant, sometimes terrifying, but always totally incomprehensible.

  Lady Otilia, however, had long since learned that even forces of Nature, if attacked perseveringly enough when it was worth one's while, and philosophically ignored when it was not, could be coped with. She went on talking quite calmly about Lyndale's sterling qualifications to be accepted into the Quarters family, among the most noteworthy of which were, naturally, his estates in Derbyshire and Kent and his income of fifty thousand a year.

  "And as to family," Gwendolen, who had been awaiting her opportunity, casually interjected after a time, "you know, of course. Papa, that he is cousin to the Duke of Tardiff."

  Mr. Quarters's knife and fork were laid down abruptly; the bushy, reddish brows drew together to shadow the penetrating glare of his blue eyes in a manner that always terrified Jane.

  "What's that you say?" he barked. "The Duke of Tardiff?"

  "Yes, Papa," said Gwendolen demurely, casting a significant glance at Campaspe, who could scarcely conceal her satisfaction as she waited for the explosion to come.

  Mr. Quarters's hand struck the table with a blow that set the dishes jumping.

  "Now, by Jupiter!" he ejaculated. "By—Jupiter! If that isn't the most amazing piece of luck!"

  "Luck, Papa!" Campaspe stared at him incredulously. "But didn't you hear what Gwen said? He is cousin to the Duke!'*

  "The devil fly away with the Duke!" Mr. Quarters said impatiently but without animus, as if he were too elated to trouble himself over hi
s old enemy. "Don't you understand, girl? This is the man who is said to have induced the Sultan of Morocco to part with a pair of pure-bred Arabian mares—mares, by God!—you know the Arabs hold them sacred—and has brought them back with him to England! There hasn't been such a coup since the Darley Arabian was picked up in Syria! By God, I shall look forward to meeting him!"

  Campaspe and Gwendolen gazed at each other in despair; Jane looked bewildered; and Lady Otilia, signalling with a dreamy air for the pudding to be brought in, said complacently that she fancied he might have that pleasure very soon. She then began discussing with Jane which of the gowns she had brought back with her from London would do for Campaspe when they were invited, as she was sure they must be, to dine at Beauworth.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ON THE FOLLOWING morning Lady Otilia, eager to display to the world the exquisitely fashionable new Jane who had returned to her from London, persuaded her to accompany her on a walk to the village to make some trifling purchases—an excursion that was quite likely to end, Gwendolen was well aware, in a call at the Rectory or the Manor, even if the Rut-ledges, who lived in a handsome red brick house fronting upon the High Street, did not observe them from their drawing-room windows and beckon them to come in.

  Gwendolen herself, having planned to spend the morning over the household accounts, was thankful for this excuse not to join the party; but Campaspe, who had constituted herself a sort of watchdog for Jane, as if she felt that her presence beside her would at least have the power to prevent Lyndale from making an immediate attempt to carry her off, readily accepted Lady Otilia's invitation to accompany her and Jane.

  There was no danger, Lady Otilia announced, that Lord Lyndale would call upon his important errand before they returned, for gentlemen of fashion never rose before noon, and by the hour at which they might reasonably expect him they would have long concluded their errands and be back at Brightleaves.