lady oxted, in spite of her husband's general reflections upon her character, could not reasonably be called an ungenerous woman; and when, ten days after these last occurrences, it was her painful duty to visit the convalescent sofa of geoffrey langham, she said without circumlocution, or any attempt to shirk due responsibility, that she supposed it was she from whom he had caught the influenza. geoffrey, on his side, did not regard this as anything but a certain conclusion, but added, with the irritable resignation which accompanies convalescence, that he did not suppose she had done it on purpose. the effect of this was to make lady oxted wonder whether she had really given it him at all.

"you speak as if it was quite certain," she said. "but when one comes to think of it, harry came to see me the same day, in great depression, which predisposes you to catch it, and he hasn't, so to speak, blown his nose since."

"very well, then; you did not give it me," said geoffrey. "please have it your own way. it was my own idea: i evolved influenza for myself.[pg 194] besides, harry was deeply in love. you can't do two things at once."

"hush-a-bye, baby," said lady oxted. "geoffrey, i didn't come here to be contradict——"

"no, to contradict, it appears."

"primarily, not even that, but to propose that you and i and bob should go down to oxted to-morrow, or rather to tell you that bob and i are going, and propose that you should join us; we shall get well in half the time down there."

"are you not well?" asked geoffrey. "you look a picture."

"a picture of a boiled rag," said lady oxted, "treated, with extreme realism. well, will you come?"

"of course i will, with pleasure. i long to get out of this frouzy town. what does miss aylwin do?"

"she will go to the arbuthnots while i am away, poor dear!"

"she might do worse. and harry?"

"harry will probably go to the arbuthnots too, a good deal," remarked lady oxted.

she got up.

"i am glad you promised to come without any hesitation," she said, "because otherwise i should have had to press you, which is degrading. harry's engagement has given me a lot to think about, and i want to express my thoughts to some very slow, ordinary person like you, in the same way as molière used to read his plays to his[pg 195] housekeeper. i have got a sort of idea in my head, and i wish to see how it impresses the completely average mind."

"i hope it is a nice idea," said geoffrey. "but one can't tell with you. you have such an inconvenient sort of mind!"

"it isn't nice," said lady oxted; "in fact, it is just the opposite. however, you will hear more of it to-morrow evening. here's harry. i shall go. dear me, i wonder whether bob looked as idiotic as that when we were engaged? i don't think he can have, or i should have broken it off."

harry's face in fact wore a smile of intensely inane radiance, but his desire to score off his aunt, as he now called her, caused it to fade off like the breath off a razor.

"no, dear aunt," he replied, "but you see he wasn't engaged to a person of—well, of the same class as evie.—ah! fifteen love, geoff, old boy. that will rankle by-and-bye in the mind of our aunt."

lady oxted put her nose in the air, as if she had caught the whiff of a bad smell.

"can you explain the idiocy of your smile when you entered?" she asked.

"rather. i was just going to, when you began to be personal. three sundays ago, when evie was down at vail, she went out walking, after lunch, with uncle francis. do you remember, dear aunt, and you snored loud and long under the trees on the lawn all that blessed afternoon?[pg 196] yes, i see you remember. well, they met—o lord! you can't beat this—they met jim and the dairymaid walking out all properly in the wood, and evie thought, until she came back and found me on the lawn, she seriously thought jim was me. she was furious: i got her to confess that she was furious. great scott! she thought i was flirting with the dairymaid. i knew a maid worth two of her!"

lady oxted began to attend suddenly in the middle of this.

"and what did mr. francis say?" she asked. "did he also think it was you?"

"i don't know. evie didn't mention him, and then we began talking—well, we began talking about something else.—poor old geoff, how goes it? if you give me the flue, i'll poison your beef-tea, and you may lay it to that. it's all the luck."

lady oxted sighed.

"jack and jill went up the hill," she remarked.

"yes, you may laugh if you like," said harry, "but i'm beginning to believe in the luck. i paid my penalty, and now i'm getting the reward. oh, a big one! did anybody ever hear of such luck?" he demanded.

"laugh?" cried lady oxted. "who talked of laughing? of course, if evie chooses to marry a man with unmistakable signs of incipient mania, and mrs. aylwin doesn't object, it's her own affair. but i wish i was her mother."

"yes, that would be something," said harry,[pg 197] in a tone of extreme indulgence. "it would be charming for you, as you can't be her husband. poor aunt!"

"thirty love," said geoffrey.

lady oxted gathered up her card case and parasol.

"you just wait, my boy, till i get you to oxted," she said truculently.

"is geoff going to oxted?" asked harry, throwing himself extravagantly on the sofa by him. "geoff, geoff, would you leave me alone, alone in london, like jessica's first prayer? i will follow you, if it be on foot and begging my bread. i can not live without you. see wilson barrett," he explained, sitting upright again, and smoothing his tumbled hair.

lady oxted shrugged her shoulders, and shook a despairing head.

"poor evie!" she said. "poor, dear evie!"

harry sprang up and stood with his back to the door.

"now why 'poor evie'?" he asked. "explain precisely why. you don't leave the room until you have explained."

"if you don't come away from that door and let me out," said lady oxted, "i shall ring the bell, harry, continuously. this sort of bully-ragging is so good for a man with a splitting headache, and shattered by influenza! i always tell everybody how considerate you are."

"geoff, have you got a headache?" asked harry.

[pg 198]

"no. fight it out."

lady oxted cast one baleful glance at him, advanced to the bell, and made an awkward, unconvincing movement to indicate that she was pressing it. harry burst into loud, rude laughter.

"try again," he said. "you have to press the button in the centre of the bell, not a spot on the wall paper. more to your left."

"forty love," said geoffrey.

lady oxted turned away from the bell with dignity.

"i don't understand the difficulty some people feel about apologizing," she said. "i apologize fully for all i have said."

"explain it," said harry.

"there is no explanation known to me. i spoke at random; i have not the slightest idea what i meant. let me out, harry."

at this he granted her liberty, saw her to the door, and ran upstairs again.

"o geoff!" he said. "she had on a big, broad-brimmed hat and little yellow shoes. i saw them."

"that all?" said geoffrey. "rather south-sea islander for the park."

harry sighed.

"yes, i once used to think that sort of thing funny, too," he said. "never mind; you can't know. however, there was the hat, and her face was underneath it."

"now that is really extraordinary," said geoffrey.

[pg 199]

"the face? i should just think it was. it's the most extraordinary thing in the world. and it's mine, and mine is hers. lord! whatever can she do with such an ugly mug?"

"is that the end?" asked geoffrey, without any show of impatience.

"no, you blamed idiot; that's only the beginning. she was walking, do you understand, with mrs. arbuthnot. so i thought, 'none of that now, woman!' and i just said so flat. at least i didn't say so, but they understood what i meant, and so we sat down on two little green chairs, and i paid twopence for them. dirt cheap!"

"you and mrs. arbuthnot and she. i quite follow."

"of course; oh! i'm not sure what happened to mrs. arbuthnot. she didn't go to heaven; at least i didn't see her there, so i suppose—oh, well, i suppose she stopped where she was. i dare say she's there now. so i said, 'evie.'"

"and she said 'harry,'" remarked geoffrey.

long brown fingers stole round his neck.

"now, tell me the truth, like george washington," said harry, "were you listening?"

"no; i guessed. take your hand away."

"devilish smart of you, then! she did say 'harry,' and i won't deny it. my name, i tell you, you malingering skunk; she meant me! she called me harry. o lord!"

"well, it's altogether the most remarkable thing i ever heard," said geoffrey. "and as the[pg 200] bell for lunch sounded ten minutes ago, i propose that you should tell me the rest afterward."

it was geoffrey's first attempt at stairs since he had gone to bed, and he threw an arm round harry's neck, and leaned his weight on him.

"and ten days ago," he said, "i met death and despair in the hall, and that was you. 'this is what comes of the luck' thought i. o harry, if i wasn't so shaky i'd fetch you such a whack in the ribs!"

and after the manner of the british youth, they quite understood each other.

the influenza party left london next day after lunch. lord oxted had brought a whole library of blue-books with him, out of which he hoped to establish an array of damaging facts against the government, and his red pencil, as they sped out of london, had no sinecure. mile after mile of the inconceivable meanness of house-backs fell behind them, and at last lady oxted consented to the partial opening of one of the carriage windows.

"there, that is a proper breath of air," she said. "sniff it in, geoffrey. but i will have no suburban microbes flying into my face. oh, we are wrecks, we are wrecks, but we will stop at oxted till we are refloated."

lord oxted frowned heavily, and scored the offending page.

"is the man colonial secretary," he asked, "or is he the autocrat of all the englands? and it never occurred to any of them, apparently, that[pg 201] there might be something in those grand pianos. i should have thought that somebody might have guessed that this immense importation of huge cases implied something. but i am wrong; nobody guessed it. they said they could not be expected to see through stone walls. stone walls, indeed! they couldn't see through plate-glass windows."

"so the pianos turned out to be stone walls," said his wife.

"yes; they were put up round pretoria."

the heat in london had been intense; perhaps it was not less at oxted; but there was a difference in its quality unnoticed by the thermometer, and after tea the two wrecks made themselves exceedingly comfortable on the lawn, and lady oxted, without warning, began the statement of her idea to the very ordinary person.

"harry's marriage is fixed for the middle of november," she said. "evie will have to go back to santa margarita first, and i hope she may persuade her mother to come over for it. it is now the middle of july; there are four months before he will be married. much may happen in four months."

"as a rule very little does," remarked geoffrey.

"in this case i sincerely hope that very little will," said she. "geoffrey, i am not altogether happy about it."

"why not?" he asked. "you told me you pushed harry till he went and asked her. did[pg 202] you mean him to be refused? or are you afraid that either of them will think they have made a mistake? of course, they are both young."

lady oxted laughed.

"you funny old maid!" she said. "no, i am not afraid of that."

"never mind me," he said. "what are you afraid of, then?"

lady oxted was silent so long that geoffrey would have repeated his question had he not felt quite certain that she had heard it. as it was, it was a full half minute, an aeon of a pause in conversation, before she replied. then:

"of mr. francis," she said.

geoffrey had just lit a match for his cigarette, but he held it so long that it burned down, and he threw it hastily away, as the flame scorched his finger-tips. the cigarette he put very carefully and absently back in his case.

"what on earth do you mean?" he asked.

"it was to tell you that—that i particularly wanted you to come down here. listen."

lady oxted felt herself suddenly nervous, even when her only audience was the very ordinary person. she had thought the matter over in her own mind so constantly that she hoped she was familiarized with it, but when it came to speaking of it, she found she was not. thus it was that she began very haltingly, and with frequent pauses.

"i feel sure that he is essentially opposed to the marriage," she said, "for reasons which i will[pg 203] soon tell you; and when he professes to be so much delighted with it i conclude he is acting a part. now one has always to be cautious in dealing with a man who is acting, until you know both what his part is and what he himself is. as regards mr. francis i know neither. i feel sure, however, that he is a very clever old man. well?"

"but is it not pure assumption that he is acting a part?" asked geoffrey.

"no; it is reasoned truth. i will tell you how i know it. the sunday that evie and i were down at vail, mr. francis and evie (evie told me this, and harry, as you heard yesterday, corroborated a part of it) walked in the afternoon in the wood just above the house, and suddenly came on one of the grooms—jim, yes, his name was jim—walking out with his young woman, who is dairymaid. now, jim, in appearance—you have seen him many times probably—is the very spit and image of harry. evie (they only had the most momentary glance of him) thought it actually was harry, till she saw him half an hour later sleeping under a tree on the lawn. but it appears that mr. francis also thought it was harry, for he said to himself half aloud, 'ah, the foolish boy!' now you, geoffrey, have known harry some time, and, well—have you ever known him behave as many young men do behave: talk to barmaids, flirt with waitresses, all that kind of thing?"

"never; he never did such a thing. at oxford we used to call him the womanthrope."

[pg 204]

"then explain to me what follows. mr. francis begged evie not to be too hard on him. he said that harry was honest, that his 'previous foolishnesses'—the exact expression, evie tells me—had never been anything serious. now you say there never were any."

"no, never," said geoffrey, "not to my knowledge at least. oh, i can go much further than that: i know there can not have been. harry simply is not that kind of fellow."

"then it appears to me that mr. francis only alluded to the harmless nature of harry's previous foolishnesses in order to set evie against him. a nice girl, you know, does not like that sort of thing. and how was it that it never occurred to mr. francis that the two figures they saw were jim and his young woman? it is impossible that it should not, it seems to me. the two are engaged, harry tells me; they often walk out together. mr. francis must have known that; he must also have known of jim's extraordinary likeness to harry."

"but the likeness deceived miss aylwin. by the way, had she ever seen jim?"

"yes; the evening before only."

"yet she was deceived. why not mr. francis also?"

lady oxted paused.

"it is very unlikely, but i grant you that it is possible. take what i have told you alone, and it proves nothing. but there is more."

[pg 205]

she was speaking less lamely now; the words had begun to come.

"you met harry in the hall when you came back from having tea with me a fortnight ago," she said. "how did his face strike you? was it very happy? and do you know the cause of it?"

"no; harry did not tell me, though i asked him."

"then i shall tell you," said lady oxted. "i know how his face struck me, for he came to see me immediately afterward. i thought all was over between him and evie. harry thought so, too, and his reason for it was a letter he had just received, of which he showed me a piece. in it mr. francis—i know it was he, harry told me so afterward—said that evie was engaged to an italian marchese. here again there was a certain foundation for his thinking so. it was true at any rate that last winter an italian in rome fell very violently in love with her, that he proposed to her. but evie refused him point blank. the thing was talked about, for it was a very good match. but mr. francis tells harry she is engaged. he may have been told so; again it is just possible, though not more than possible. now take these two incidents together; in each mr. francis made, let us say, a mistake: on one occasion he mistook the groom for harry; on the other he says that evie is engaged to an italian, whereas that was never true; she refused him. now does a common motive seem to lie behind those two mistakes? supposing for a moment[pg 206] that these mistakes were—well—deliberate mistakes, very cleverly founded on fact, i grant—can you account for both of them by supposing one desire in mr. francis's mind?"

"i see what you mean," said geoffrey.

"say it, then; i want it said."

"you mean that mr. francis wished to prevent their engagement. is that bald enough?"

"yes; that will do. it is a possibility which must not be overlooked. he has failed, but i see no reason to suppose that anything has since happened which reconciles him to their marriage. his letter to harry in answer to the announcement of his engagement was charming, perfectly charming. but so was his letter, in which he urged him to be brave and cut evie out of his life with a firm hand. so also, no doubt, was his manner when he begged evie to overlook harry's platonic little walk with a dairymaid."

geoffrey felt vaguely uneasy. now that these things were said to him, he knew that somewhere in the very inmost recesses of his brain there had lurked for some time a feeling of which he was ashamed—a secret, unaccountable distrust of this kind old man. it had been emphasized by the curious adventure of dr. armytage's door, and since then it had grown more alert, more ready to put up its head.

"now why," continued lady oxted, speaking rapidly, "should he wish to separate the two? you would have thought—harry thought and still thinks—that by this marriage mr. francis will[pg 207] feel that the old stain of suspicion that for so long had been on his name, ever since the harmsworth affair, will be removed. and harry has good reason for thinking so: mr. francis himself told him that evie's coming to vail was the happiest thing that had happened to him for years. why, then, should they not marry?"

"perhaps mr. francis finds that the continual revival of those memories, which miss aylwin calls up, is too painful," said geoffrey.

"does that seem to you reasonable?" asked lady oxted, "and if reasonable, can mortal mind invent a more awful piece of selfishness?"

geoffrey considered a moment.

"no, it does not seem to me reasonable," he said; "i recant that."

"can you think of any other motive?"

"ah! you are monstrous," said geoffrey suddenly; "you suggest monstrous things."

"i have suggested nothing. i want to hear your suggestion. what is it, geoffrey?"

"you mean that mr. francis does not want harry to marry at all. you remember that he is harry's heir. do you not see how absurd such an idea is? who ever heard of an old man, over seventy, trying to make his grand-nephew a celibate? you might as well hope to rear a child who should never see a fire or a book."

"ah! you are shocked," said lady oxted, "but wait a moment. do you remember what you told me about dr. godfrey and dr. armytage? geoffrey, what is that sinister man doing[pg 208] at vail? he is appalling, i tell you. he is one of the black spots on the medical profession. heart specialist! he is a surgeon of terrible dexterity—unscrupulous, venal. what does mr. francis want with him?"

geoffrey got up in great excitement.

"i will hear no more," he said, in a tremulous voice. "it is you who suggest things that i have to put into words. tell me what you mean; say straight out what you suspect?"

lady oxted rose too.

"if i knew what i suspected, i would tell you," she said. "but i can't make out what it is. at any rate we have talked long enough for the present."

she paused a moment, then broke out again, her own anxiety—how deep she had never known till this minute—breaking all bounds.

"promise me this," she cried. "promise me you will be a good friend to harry. be much with him, be observant—not suspicious, but observant. remember that i am afraid, though i do not know what of. see if you can not find out what it is that i fear. there, that is enough. you promise me that, geoffrey?"

"i will not play detective," said he. "i both like and honour that old man."

"i do not ask you to play detective," she said. "i pray that your liking and honour for mr. francis may never be diminished. but be much with harry, and be full of common sense. come!"

"yes, i will promise that," said he.