The Daughter Pays - Mrs. Baillie Reynolds

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He did not know that it was at Gerald's instigation that Mims had gone to the length of actually financing the scheme of the visit. Yet his shrewdness rather suspected something of the sort. During the whole fortnight of Virginia's sojourn he had been on tenter-hooks—manœuvring to keep his son out of the way without seeming to do so.

      They had—thanks, he felt sure, to his policy—arrived safely at the last day of Miss Mynors' stay. Last moments, however, are fraught with particular danger. Mr. Rosenberg could not feel that he was as yet "out of the wood," and would probably have undergone even worse apprehensions had he known of Gerald's appointment to meet the two girls at Hertford House and give them tea.

      "If we hadn't arranged to meet Gerald here, I would just walk right away, out of the place," muttered Mims presently. "I wish that man would not dog us like this."

      "Let us leave off looking at the pictures," suggested Virginia, "and go and sit at the top of the staircase, in that recess. Then we shall see Mr. Rosenberg as he comes up—and the man could hardly pursue us there without being openly offensive."

      "Good!" replied Mims with satisfaction. They left the Boucher room, in which the stranger seemed to be absorbed in contemplation, and seated themselves in the alcove, behind the statue of "Triumphant Love."

      They made a dainty picture in the fuller light which fell upon them there; and they sat on undisturbed until they saw the head of their escort appearing above the edge of the staircase.

      Mims stood up and called to him, and in a moment he had joined them.

      "Tired of the pictures already?" he asked, glancing at his watch. "I am not late, am I?"

      "Oh, no, not a bit. We have only been here a very few minutes," replied his sister, noting that the lame man was now standing in the doorway, and that his eyes were fixed on Gerald.

      "Read what is written round the pedestal of this statue, boy," she went on mischievously. "Is it true, or is it not?"

      Gerald stooped over the words cut upon the circular base of the figure. He was not actually a handsome man, but he was, without doubt, distinguished-looking. Mr. Rosenberg senior prided himself upon the fact that his son's face showed no racial characteristics. His features were clean-cut, he was well-shaved and well-groomed, carried himself with dignity, and was usually self-possessed. He stood before the marble cupid, conscious in every nerve of the close proximity of his sister's beautiful friend, and read aloud the couplet:

       Qui que tu sois, voici ton maître! Il l'est, le fut, ou le doit être.

      "Is it true, Gerald?" asked Mims naughtily. He looked at Virginia.

      "Is it true, Miss Mynors?"

      Virginia hesitated. "Well, I think it is, but not in the sense in which this inscription means it," she ventured timidly. "I mean—there is a love which is stronger than anything or anybody—but not that love—not that silly winged boy." She blushed a little as she spoke, and looked so divinely pretty, her small teeth just showing between the parted lips, her shadowy, Greuze eyes uplifted, that Gerald felt his head swim.

      "I think you are right," he said, speaking with extra gravity to hide his emotion.

      "Virgie is simply ridiculous about love," grumbled Mims. "She would give away her head, her heart, her hand, anything she had, for those she loves—her mother and her little sister——"

      "And Tony," reprovingly put in Virginia.

      "And Tony," teased her friend. "Isn't she a baby, Gerald?"

      The young man considered her. "Or an angel?" he suggested. There was, to him, something awe-inspiring in the simplicity of this girl. With a face that might have brought the world to her feet, she was absorbed in the domestic affections, untouched, as it would seem, by the admiration she excited.

      "Well, as the car is down there waiting, we had better be off," remarked Mims, after a short interval in which she had left the two to talk together. "Are you going to take us to Fuller's, Gerald? If so, we ought to move on. You know we must dine early; we are going to the theatre for Virgie's last night."

      The eyes of the man and the girl met, upon that, with mutual regret. Her last night! Cinderella must put off her dainty raiment and return to her saucepan-scouring, bed-making, account-keeping, making-ends-meet existence. The pang that shot through Gerald's heart was so like physical pain that he had a fanciful idea of the marble boy—the "Triumphant Love" who looked smiling down upon them—having shot his dart and reached the mark of his innermost feeling.

      Could he let her go?

      Like his father, he was a man of the world. Like his father, he had planned the alliance with birth and money which was to establish his position among English gentry. There was a sharp struggle in his mind. Had Virginia had one ounce of the coquette in her, she could have clinched the matter in five minutes.

      The lame man, who had watched the whole colloquy, descended the stairs behind them in time to see the perfectly appointed motor in waiting, with its two men in livery. As he turned about and reascended to enter the galleries once more, there was a bitter sneer on his mouth, a look of active malevolence, as of one who deliberately turns his back upon his better feelings.

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      FATHER AND SON

      "The wise sometimes from wisdom's ways depart: Can youth then hush the dictates of the heart? Precepts of prudence curb, but can't control The fierce emotions of the flowing soul."—Byron.

      The three young people, after partaking at Fuller's of an excellent tea, returned to Bryanston Square in good time to dress for dinner.

      As they entered the house, Mr. Rosenberg emerged from his library on the ground floor, and called to Gerald, who, thus summoned, hung up his hat and walked into the dark, cool room where his father was seated at his roll-top desk, with a letter lying before him.

      The elder man looked up at his only son with a kindly, half-rueful expression. "Gerald," he said, "I'm not as a rule tyrannical, and I think you will admit that I don't pry unduly into your affairs."

      "I do admit it, father——"

      "Well, if I put a question which may seem to you unwarranted, I want you to understand that there is grave reason for it. The question is this. Is there any understanding between yourself and Miss Mynors?"

      Gerald flushed, a slow, dark flush, as he seated himself near his father, his eyes on the ground. "No," he said quietly, "not as yet."

      "Ha!" The shrewd, kindly eyes above the rims of the reading-glasses were fixed upon him. "That means that you might—eh, Gerald?"

      The younger man did not at once reply. He seemed to be weighing carefully the thing he wished to say. At last:

      "I am not a fool, father," he began, "and I have ambition, or I should be no son of yours. I should prefer to make a marriage which would establish me socially." Embarrassment made his phrasing somewhat stilted. "You will remember that when I first saw Miss Mynors, she was the daughter of a man with a county position. One assumed the adequate rent-roll that went with it."

      "Yes, yes, my boy—I quite understand."

      There was a pause. "She is far the most beautiful girl I ever saw," said Gerald at length.

      "I grant it."

      "She has also a beautiful disposition."

      "H'mph!"

      "Yes, it is so. Her birth being undeniable, and her beauty so great, I have been wondering whether—whether anything else that is within my reach could ever be as well worth having—could ever compensate me for her loss."

      "In

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