denis and lucy were married at the end of september. they went motoring in italy for a month, and by the beginning of november were settled at astleys. astleys was in berkshire, and was urquhart's home. it was rather beautiful, as homes go, with a careless, prosperous grace about it at which lucy laughed because it was so urquhartesque.

almost at once they asked some people to stay there to help with the elections and the pheasant shooting. the elections were hoped for in december. urquhart did not propose to bother much about them; he was a good deal more interested in the pheasants; but he had, of course, every intention of doing the usual and suitable things, and carrying the business through well. lucy only laughed; to want to get into parliament was so funny, looked at from the point of view she had always been used to. denis, being used by inheritance and upbringing to another point of view, did not see that it was so funny; to him it was a very natural profession for a man to go into; his family had always provided a supply of members for both houses. lucy and peter, socially more obscure, laughed childishly together over it. "fancy being a liberal or a conservative out of all the things there are in the world to be!" as peter had once commented.

but it was delightfully urquhart-like, this lordly assumption of a share in the government of a country. no doubt it was worth having, because all the things urquhart wanted and obtained were that; he had an eye for good things, like peter, only he gained possession of them, and peter could only admire from afar.

they were talking about the election prospects at dinner on the evening of the fifteenth of november. they were a young and merry party. at one end of the table was denis, looking rather pale after a hard day's hunting, and very much amused with life; at the other lucy, in a white frock, small and open-eyed like a flower, and very much amused too; and between them were the people, young mostly, and gay, who were staying with them. lucy, who had been brought up in a secluded bohemianism, found it very funny and nice having a house-party, and so many servants to see after them all that one needn't bother to run round and make sure everyone had soap, and so on.

one person, not young, who was staying there, was lord evelyn urquhart. lucy loved him. he loved her, and told funny stories. sometimes, between the stories, she would catch his near-sighted, screwed up eyes scanning her face with a queer expression that might have been wistfulness; he seemed at times to be looking for something in her face, and finding it. particularly when she laughed, in her chuckling, gurgling way, he looked like this, and would grow grave suddenly. they had talked together about all manner of things, being excellent friends, but only once so far about lucy's cousin peter. once had been too much, lucy had found. the margerisons were a tabooed subject with lord evelyn urquhart.

denis shrugged his shoulders over it. "they did him brown, you see," he explained, in his light, casual way. "uncle evelyn can't forgive that. and it's because he was so awfully fond of peter that he's so bitter against him now. i never mention him; it's best not.... you know, you keep giving the poor dear shocks by looking like peter, and laughing like him, and using his words. you are rather like, you know."

"i know," said lucy. "it's not only looking and laughing and words; we think alike too. so perhaps if he gets fond of me he'll forgive peter sometime."

"he's an implacable old beggar," denis said. "it's stupid of him. it never seems to me worth while to get huffy; it's so uncomfortable. he expects too much of people, and when they disappoint him he—"

"takes umbradge," lucy filled in for him. that was another of peter's expressions; they shared together a number of such stilted, high-sounding phrases, mostly culled either out of adelphi melodrama or the fiction of a by-gone age.

to-night, when the cloth had been removed that they might eat fruit, denis was informed that there was a gentleman waiting to see him. the gentleman had not vouchsafed either his name or business, so he could obviously wait a little longer, till denis had finished his own business. in twenty minutes denis went to the library, and there found hilary margerison, sitting by the fire in a great coat and muffler and looking cold. when he rose and faced him, denis saw that he also looked paler than of old, and thinner, and less perfectly shaved, and his hair was longer. he might have been called seedy-looking; he might have been sidney carton in "the only way"; he had always that touch of the dramatic about him that suggested a stage character. he had a bad cough.

"oh," said urquhart, polite and feeling embarrassed; "how do you do? i'm sorry to have kept you waiting; they didn't tell me who it was. sit down, won't you?"

hilary said thanks, he thought not. he had a keen sense of the fit. so he refused the cigarette urquhart offered him, and stood by the fire, looking at the floor. urquhart stood opposite him, and thought how ill and how little reputable he looked.

hilary said, in his high, sweet, husky voice, "it is no use beating about the bush. i want help. we are in need; we are horribly hard up, to put it baldly. that has passed between your family and mine which makes you the last person i should wish to appeal to as a beggar. i propose a business transaction." he paused to cough.

urquhart, feeling impatient at the prospect of a provoking interview when he wanted to be playing bridge, said "yes?" politely.

"you," said hilary, "are intending to stand as a candidate for this constituency. you require for that, i fancy, a reputation wholly untarnished; the least breath dimming it would be for you a disastrous calamity. i have some information which, if sent to the local liberal paper, would seriously tell against you in the public mind. it is here."

he took it out of his breast pocket and handed it to urquhart—a type-written sheet of paper. he must certainly have been to a provincial theatre lately; he had hit its manners and methods to a nicety, the silly ass.

urquhart took the paper gingerly and did not look at it.

"thanks; but ... i don't know that i am interested, do you know. isn't this all rather silly, mr. margerison?"

"if you will oblige me by reading it," said mr. margerison.

so urquhart obliged him. it was all about him, as was to be expected; enough to make a column of the berkshire press.

"well?" said hilary, when he had done.

"well," said urquhart, folding up the paper and returning it, "thank you for showing it me. but again i must say that i am not particularly interested. of course you will send anything you like to any paper you like; it is no business of mine. there's the libel law, as of course you know; newspapers are as a rule rather careful about that. no respectable paper, i needn't say, would care to use such copy as this of yours.... well, good night.... oh, by the way, i suppose your brother told you all that?"

hilary said, "i had it from various reliable sources." he stood uncertain, with wavering eyes, despair killing hope. "you will do nothing at all to save your reputation, then?"

urquhart laughed, unamused, with hard eyes. he was intensely irritated.

"do you think it likely? i don't care what you get printed in any dirty rag about me, man. why on earth should i?"

the gulf between them yawned; it was unbridgeable. from hilary's world insults might be shrieked and howled, dirt thrown with all the strength of hate, and neither shrieks nor dirt would reach across the gulf to urquhart's. they simply didn't matter. hilary, realising this, grew slowly, dully red, with the bitterness of mortified expectation. urquhart's look at him, supercilious, contemptuous, aloof, slightly disgusted, hurt his vanity. he caught at the only weapon he had which could hurt back.

"i must go and tell peter, then, that his information has been of no use."

urquhart said merely, "peter won't be surprised. it's no good your trying to make me think that peter is joining in this absurdity. he has too much sense of the ridiculous. he seems to have talked to you pretty freely of my concerns, which i certainly fancied he would keep to himself; i suppose he did that by way of providing entertaining conversation; peter was always a chatterbox"—it was as well that peter was not there to hear the edge in the soft, indifferent voice—"but he isn't quite such a fool as to have countenanced this rather stagey proceeding of yours. he knows me—used to know me—pretty well, you see.... good night. you have plenty of time to catch your train, i think."

hilary stopped to say, "is that all you have to say? you won't let your connexion with our family—with peter—induce you to help us in our need?... i've done an unpleasant thing to-night, you know; i've put my pride in my pocket and stooped to the methods of the cad, for the sake of my wife and little children. i admit i have made a mistake, both of taste and judgment; i have behaved unworthily; you may say like a fool. but are you prepared to see us go under—to drive by and leave us lying in the road, as you did to that old tuscan peasant? does it in no way affect your feelings towards us that you are now peter's cousin by marriage—besides being practically, his half-brother?"

"i am not practically, or in any other way, peter's half-brother," said urquhart casually. "but that is neither here nor there. peter and i are—have been—friends, as you know. i should naturally give him help if he asked me for it. he has not done so; all that has happened is that you have tried to blackmail me.... i really see no use in prolonging this interview, mr. margerison. good night." urquhart was bored and impatient with the absurd scene.

into the middle of it walked peter, pale and breathless. he stood by the door and looked at them, dazed and blinking at the light; looked at urquhart, who stood leaning his shoulder against the chimney-piece, his hands in his pockets, the light full on his fair, tranquil, bored face, and at hilary, pale and tragic, with wavering, unhappy eyes. so they stood for a type and a symbol and a sign that never, as long as the world endures, shall margerisons get the better of urquharts.

they both looked at peter, and urquhart's brows rose a little, as if to say, "more margerisons yet?"

hilary said, "what's the matter, peter? why have you come?"

peter said, rather faintly, "i meant to stop you before you saw denis. i suppose i'm too late.... i made peggy tell me. i found a paper, you see; and i asked peggy, and she said you'd come down here to use it. have you?"

"he has already done his worst," denis's ironic voice answered for him. "sprung the awful threat upon me."

peter leant back against the door, feeling rather sick. he had run all the way from the station; and, as always, he was too late.

then he laughed a little. the contrast of hilary's tragedian air and urquhart's tranquil boredom was upsetting to him.

urquhart didn't laugh, but looked at him enquiringly.

"it's certainly funny rather," he said quietly. "you must have got a good deal of quiet fun out of compiling that column."

"oh," said peter. "but i didn't, you know."

"i gather you helped—supplied much of the information. that story of the old man i brutally slew and then callously left uncared for on the road—you seem to have coloured that rather highly in passing it on.... i suppose it was stupid of me to fancy that you weren't intending to make that public property. not that i particularly mind: there was nothing to be ashamed of in that business; but it somehow never happened to occur to me that you were relating it."

"i didn't," said peter. "i have never told anyone."

urquhart said nothing; his silence was expressive.

peter stammered into speech incoherently.

"at least—at least—yes, i believe i did tell peggy the story, months ago, in venice—but i didn't say it was you. i merely said, if someone had done that ... what would she think? i wanted to know if she thought we ought to have found the old man's people and told them."

"i see," said urquhart. "and did she?"

"no. she thought it was all right." peter had known beforehand that peggy would think it was all right; that was why he had asked her, to be reassured, to have the vague trouble in his mind quieted.

and she, apparently, had seen through his futile pretence, had known it was urquhart he spoke of, needed reassuring about (peter didn't realise that even less shrewd observers than peggy might easily know when it was urquhart he spoke of) and had gone and told hilary. and hilary, in his need, had twisted it into this disgusting story, and had typed it and brought it down to astleys to-night, with other twisted stories.

"i suppose the rest too," said urquhart, "you related to your sister-in-law to see what she would think."

peter stammered, "i don't think so. no, i don't believe anything else came from me. did it, hilary?"

hilary shrugged his shoulders, and made no other answer.

"it really doesn't particularly matter," said urquhart, "whether the informant was you or some other of my acquaintances. i daresay my gyp is responsible for the story of the actresses i brought down to the st. gabriel's dance; he knew about it at the time, i believe. i am not in the least ashamed of that either; the 'berkshire press' is extremely welcome to it, if it can find space for it.... well, now, will you both stay the night with me, or must you get back? the last good train goes at 10.5, i think."

peter said, "come along, hilary."

urquhart stood and watched them go.

as they turned away, he said, in his gentle, inexpressive voice, that hadn't been raised in anger once, "can i lend you any money, peter?"

peter shook his head, though he felt hilary start.

"no, thank you. it is very good of you.... good night."

"good night."

going out of the room, they came face to face with lord evelyn urquhart coming in. he saw them; he stiffened a little, repressing a start; he stood elaborately aside to let them pass, bowing slightly.

neither margerison said anything. hilary's bow was the stage copy of his own; peter didn't look at him at all, but hurried by.

the servant let them out, and shut the hall door behind them.

lord evelyn said to his nephew in the library, swinging his eye-glass restlessly to and fro, "why do you let those people into your house, denis? i thought we had done with them."

"they came to call," said denis, who did not seem disposed to be communicative. "i can't say why they chose this particular hour."

lord evelyn paced up the room, restless, nervous, petulant.

"it's monstrous," he said querulously. "perfectly monstrous. shameless. how dare they show their faces in this house?... i suppose they wanted something out of you, did they?"

denis merely said, "after all, peter is my cousin by marriage, you must remember. and i have never broken with him."

lord evelyn returned, "the more shame to you. he's as great a swindler as his precious brother; they're a pair, you can't deny that."

denis didn't attempt to deny it; probably he was feeling a little tired of the margerisons to-night.

"i'm not defending peter, or his brother either. i only said that he's lucy's cousin, and she's very fond of him, and i'm not keen on actually breaking with him. as to the brother, he's so much more of an ass than anything else that to call him a swindler is more than he deserves. he simply came here to-night to play the fool; he's no more sense than a silly ass out of a play."

that was what peter was telling hilary on the way to the station. hilary defended himself rather feebly.

"my good peter, we must have money. we are in positive want. of course, i never meant to proceed to extremities; i thought the mere mention of such a threat would be enough to make him see that we really were desperately hard up, and that he might as well help us. but he doesn't care. like all rich people, he is utterly callous and selfish.... do you think lucy would possibly give us any help, if you asked her?"

"i shan't ask her," said peter. "don't, please, hilary," he added miserably. "can't you see...."

"see what? i see that we get a little more destitute every day: that the boarders are melting away; that i am reduced to unthinkably sordid hackwork, and you to the grind of uncongenial toil; that peggy can't afford to keep a cook who can boil a potato respectably (they were like walnuts to-day) that she and the children go about with their clothes dropping off them. i see that; and i see these urquharts, closely connected with our family, rolling in unearned riches, spending and squandering and wasting and never giving away. i see the robinsons, our own relations, fattening on the money that ought to have come to us, and now and then throwing us a loan as you throw a dog a bone. i see your friend leslie taking himself off to the antipodes to spend his millions, that he may be out of the reach of disturbing appeals. i see a world constituted so that you would think the devils in hell must cry shame on it." his cough, made worse by the fog, choked his relation of his vision.

peter had nothing to say to it: he could only sigh over it. the haves and the have-nots—there they are, and there is no getting round the ugly fact.

"denis," said peter, "would lend me money if i asked him. you heard him offer. but i am not going to ask him. we are none of us going to ask him. if i find that you have, and that he has given it you, i shall pay it straight back.... you know, hilary, we're really not so badly off as all that; we get along pretty well, i think; better than most other people." the other have-nots; they made no difference, in hilary's eyes, to the fact that of course the margerisons should have been among the haves.

hilary said, "you are absolutely impervious, peter, to other people's troubles," and turned up his coat-collar and sank down on a seat in the waiting-room. (of course, they had missed the 10.5, the last good train, and were now waiting for the 11.2, the slow one.)

peter walked up and down the platform, feeling very cold. he had come away, in his excitement, without his overcoat. the chill of the foggy night seemed to sink deep into his innermost being.

hilary's words rang in his ears. "i see that we get a little more destitute every day." it was true. every day the margerisons seemed to lose something more. to-night peter had lost something he could ill afford to part with—another degree of denis urquhart's regard. that seemed to be falling from him bit by bit; perhaps that was why he felt so cold. however desperately he clung to the remnants, as he had clung since that last interview in venice, he could not think to keep them much longer at this rate.

as he walked up and down the platform, his cold hands thrust deep into his pockets, he was contemplating another loss—one that would hurt absurdly much.

if hilary felt that he needed more money so badly, he must have it. there were certain things peter declined to do. he wouldn't borrow from the urquharts; but he would sell his last treasured possession to soothe hilary for a little while. the berovieri goblet had been bought for a lot of money, and could at any moment be sold for a lot of money. the berovieri goblet must go.

that evening, in the tiny attic room, peter took the adorable thing out of the box where it lay hid, and set it on the chest of drawers, in front of the candle, so that the flame shone through the blue transparency like the setting sun through a stained-glass window.

it was very, very beautiful. peter sat on the bed and looked at it, as a devotee before a shrine. in itself it was very beautiful, a magic thing of blue colour and deep light and pure shadow and clear, lovely form. peter loved it for itself, and for its symbolic character. for it was a symbol of the world of great loveliness that did, he knew, exist. when he had been turned out of that world into a grey and dusty place, he had kept that one thing, to link him with loveliness and light. peter was a materialist: he loved things, their shapes and colours, with a passion that blinded him to the beauty of the colourless, the formless, the super-sensuous.

he slipped his fingers up the chalice's slim stem and round its cool bowl, and smiled for pleasure that such a thing existed—had existed for four hundred years—to gladden the world.

"well, anyone would have thought i should have smashed you before now," he remarked, apostrophising it proudly. "but i haven't. i shall take you to christie's myself to-morrow, as whole as you were the day leslie gave you me."

it was fortunate that leslie was out of reach, and would not hear of the transaction. if he had been in england, peter would have felt bound to offer him the goblet, and he would have paid for it too enormous a price to be endured. leslie's generosity was sometimes rather overwhelming.

when peter took hilary and peggy the cheque he had received, and told them what he had received it for, hilary said, "i suppose these things must be. it was fortunate you did not ask my advice, peter; i should have hesitated what to say. it is uncommonly like bartering one's soul for guineas. to what we are reduced!"

he was an artist, and cared for beautiful goblets. he would much rather have borrowed the money, or had it given him.

peggy, who was not an artist, said, "oh, peter darling, how sweet of you! now i really can pay the butcher; i've had to hide from him the last few mornings, in the coal-hole. you dear child, i hope you won't miss that nice cup too much. when our ship comes in you shall have another."

"when," sighed hilary, who was feeling over-worked that evening. (he did advertisement pictures for a weekly paper; a sordid and degrading pursuit.)

"well," said peggy hopefully, "the boarders we have now really do pay their rent the way they never did in venice. that's such a comfort. if only larry's cough gets off his chest without turning to bronchitis, i will be quite happy. but these loathsome fogs! and that odious man coming round wanting to know why aren't the children attending school! 'i'm sure,' i said to him, 'i wish they were; the house would be the quieter missing them; but their father insists on educating them himself, because he won't let them mix up with the common children in the school; they're by way of being little gentry, do you see,' i said, 'though indeed you mightn't think it to look at them.' oh dear me, he was so impolite; he wouldn't believe that hilary was doing his duty by them, though i assured him that he read them all the 'ancient mariner' yesterday morning while they watched him dress, and that i was teaching them the alphabet whenever i had a spare minute. but nothing would satisfy him; and off the two eldest must go to the catholic school next week to be destroyed by the fog and to pick up with all the ragamuffins in the district."

"an abominable, cast-iron system," hilary murmured mechanically. "of a piece with all the other institutions of an iniquitous state."

"and what do you think," added peggy, who was busy putting a patch in silvio's knickerbockers, "guy vyvian turned up out of nowhere and called this afternoon, bad manners to him for a waster. when he found you were out, hilary, he asked where was rhoda; he'd no notion of sitting down to listen to me talking. rhoda was out at work too, of course; i told him it wasn't most of us could afford to play round in the afternoons the way he did. i suppose he'll come again, bothering and upsetting the child just when she's settling down a bit. i've thought her seeming brighter lately; she likes going about with you, peter. but there'll be pretty doings again when that man comes exciting her."

"vyvian is a cad and a low fellow," hilary said, "and i always regretted being forced into partnership with him; but i suppose one can't kick one's past acquaintances from the door. i, at least, cannot. some people can and do; they may reconcile it with their standards of decency if they choose; but i cannot. vyvian must come if he likes, and we must be hospitable to him. we must ask him to dinner if he comes again."

"yes," sniffed peggy, "i can see him! sticking his fork into the potatoes and pretending he can't get it through! oh, have him to dinner if you like; he must just make the best of what he gets if he comes. he'll be awfully rude to the rest, too, but i'll apologise for him beforehand."

"though a cad," hilary observed, "vyvian is less of a vacuous fool than most of the members of our present delightful house-party. he at least knows something of art and literature, and can converse without jarring one's taste violently by his every word. he is not, after all, a miss matthews or a mr. bridger. apologies, therefore, are scarcely called for, perhaps."

peggy said, "what a solemn face, peter. is it the vyvian man, or the beautiful cup, that we've never half thanked you for getting rid of yet?"

peter said, "it's the vyvian man. he makes me feel solemn. you see, i promised mrs. johnson faithfully to keep rhoda out of his clutches, if i could."

"darling, what a silly promise. oh, of course, we'll all do our best; but if he wants to clutch her, the silly little bird, he'll surely do it. not that i'm saying he does want to; i daresay he only wants to upset her and make her his slave and then run away again to his own place, the judas."

"but i don't want him to do that. rhoda will be unhappier than ever again."

"oh, well, i wouldn't wonder if, when rhoda sees him again now, she sees what a poor creature it is, after all. it may be a turning-point with her, and who knows will she perhaps settle down afterwards and be a reasonable girl and darn her stockings and wear a collar?"

"if one is to talk of stockings," began hilary, "i noticed caterina's to-day, and really, you know...."

peggy bit off her cotton and murmured, "oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, what's to become of us all?"a