LITMIR.BIZ

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last dawn on the bashful Buck that she had any will in the matter at all) was a blush so sudden and violent that it compelled an embarrassed reddening of her own cheeks also. Buck was not personally outraged. It was his sense of Order that was outraged. He remembered the lady's station for her, and, stammeringly but reverentially, put her back into it.

      Now to be merely reverential to a woman who is in love with you is to provoke impatience, anger and tears. On the other hand, to see a woman in tears because you will not permit her to humiliate herself is to have the other half of an impossible situation. It was one luncheon-time (the Honourable Emily now lunched frequently at the studio) that the tears came.

      "Oh, you don't care for me—you don't care for me!" she sobbed.

      Buck could not truthfully have said that he did care for her; but there she was before him, in tears.

      "If it were that Dragon girl, now——"

      Buck, while not failing to see the force of this, could only make imploring movements for the Honourable Emily to calm herself. Presently she did calm herself, sufficiently to change her tone to one of irony.

      "Do you read your Bible?" she shot over her shoulder.

      "Yes, miss," said Buck—"that is—I mean——"

      The reason for Buck's hesitation was that he had suddenly doubted whether the Honourable Emily would know a Racing Calendar by the name she had just used.

      "Do you mean The Bible, miss?" he said, fidgeting.

      She snapped: "Yes—the one with the story of Joseph in it——"

      She burst into tears anew.

      "Oh, that I should have to beg a man to marry me! I hate myself—I hate you!"

      Her hatred, however, did not prevent repetitions of the scene. At the last repetition that need trouble us here her tears conquered. The helpless Buck comforted her after the only fashion he knew anything about—the fashion he would have used towards her maid—on his knee.

      He still, however, called her "Miss."

      They were privately married in the June of 1869.

      "Don't call me 'Miss'!" she broke out petulantly one day in the middle of the honeymoon. "And you are not to have your meals with the servants! I shall lunch in my room to-day, and you are to be ready to take me out at three o'clock."

      "Yes, m'm," said Buck.

      Probably Lord Moone had less to do than he supposed with the separation that took place in the September of the same year. We may assume that a much more potent factor was the Honourable Mrs. Causton's remembrance of her own words, "That I should have to beg a man to marry me! I hate myself—I hate you!" She did very soon hate both herself and him. Poor Buck merely hated the whole subversive anomaly.

      He accepted the proposal that they should separate with perfect docility. It seemed to him entirely right. Indeed the only thing he had not accepted with docility had been his introduction to Lord Moone, on the only occasion on which the two men ever met, as "Mr. Buckley, the drawing-master." Buck hadn't liked that much. He had made himself Buck Causton in nine hours of terrific combat, and as Buck Causton he preferred to be known. But all else he suffered with touching obedience, and at the proposal that they should go their several ways his finger flew to his forehead.

      "Yes, miss," he said; and his heart, if not his lips, murmured the prayer that begins: "God bless the Squire and his relations——"

      They parted.

      They only met once more. This was in the January of the following year, in the great antlered hall at Mallard Bois, that was as regularly used on all occasions as if there had not been salons and galleries and drawing-rooms in a dozen other parts of the great place. The Honourable Mrs. Causton lay on a couch drawn up to the fire-dogs; her husband looked submissively down on her, dwarfing the suit of armour of Big Hugo by which he stood.

      She made a new proposal. It was that he should put it into her hands to set herself free once for all.

      "Yes, miss," said Buck.

      "Then," said the Honourable Mrs. Causton a quarter of an hour later, "there's the question of cruelty."

      Buck's thoughts wandered slowly back to the Piker.

      "Yes, miss," he said.

      "I need hardly tell you that as far as—er—procedure—can be stretched it will be stretched."

      "Yes, miss. Thank you, miss."

      Then wistfully Buck's eyes wandered from Big Hugo's suit of armour to his wife's face again.

      "Beg your pardon, about that cruelty, miss," he said unhappily. "Couldn't I go down—just for once, Miss—as Mr. Buckley?"

      "No; but I can assure you that I don't want this talked about more than must be either. Perhaps I ought to tell you that I shall probably marry again."

      Buck's finger went to his forehead again, this time in a duty to his successor. Then his eyes grew grave. His wife had made a slight movement.

      "If I might make so bold, miss—there's another thing——"

      She knew what he meant.

      "You've nothing to do with that," she said quickly.

      Buck would have thought that he had, but if a lady said he hadn't, well, he hadn't, that was all.

      "Yes, miss. … And asking your pardon again—about that cruelty?"

      "Oh, that's over," said Mrs. Causton, closing her eyes. "Six months ago."

      "I—I don't remember," said Buck; but once more, if a lady said it was so, so it was. Again the grave look came into his eyes, and again she understood.

      "I can have it looked after better than you can," she said.

      "And—please—you will?" he dared to supplicate.

      She nodded.

      Still he hesitated.

      "If it's a little boy, miss—I might be opening a Sparring Academy—strictly for the gentry—I wouldn't charge him nothing——"

      And after a little further discussion the shameful piece of collusion came to an end.

      They were divorced in the March of 1870. On the 15th of April the child was born—a girl. Fifteen months later the Honourable Emily married Captain Cecil Chaffinger, of the White Hussars.

      II

      The child never got on well with her mother. Mrs. Chaffinger never forgave her her paternity. The gallant Captain, on the other hand, treated her as he would have treated his own child—that is to say, he bought her extravagant toys if the proximity of a toyshop put it into his head to do so, pinched her arms and cheeks and neck jocularly whenever he found her head at the level of his waistcoat, and then departed, as likely as not to pinch maturer arms and necks, not Mrs. Chaffinger's, elsewhere. He took his wife's former mésalliance with perfect serenity. She had paid his debts and enabled him to spend a day or two in his father's house when he cared to do so, and the Captain, who was a gentleman and not very much else to boast of, held faithfully to his part of the bargain. He even dropped in once or twice at Buck Causton's new Salle d'Armes in Bruton Street. The child was called by his name—Louise Chaffinger; he called her Mops, because of her quantities of thick brown hair. The Honourable Emily became querulous and an invalid; took to falling into dozes no matter who was present, and waking up again with alarming cries; and she busied herself with charitable works performed in an uncharitable temper.

      Louie was not pretty; but the jocular Captain pinched no prettier neck than hers, and he declared, as the child grew, that her "points" would be best displayed could she go about in the largest and shadiest hat and the most closely fitting tights possible. His house (which, by the way, he had begun to encumber again) was Trant, in Buckinghamshire; but the child

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