LITMIR.BIZ

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and Oliver only stayed on at the dining-table a very few minutes after Mrs. Tropenell and Laura had gone off into the drawing-room.

      Though now on very cordial terms, the two men never had very much to say to one another. Yet Lord St. Amant had always been fond of Oliver. Being the manner of man he was, he could not but feel attached to Letty Tropenell's child. Still, there had been a time, now many long years ago, just after the death of his wife, when he had been acutely jealous of Oliver—jealous, that is, of Mrs. Tropenell's absorption, love, and pride, in her son. She had made it so very clear that she desired no closer tie to her old friend—and this had shrewdly hurt his self-esteem. But he had been too much of a philosopher to bear rancune, and such a friendship as theirs soon became had, after all, its compensations.

      When Oliver settled in Mexico the time had passed by for a renewal of the old relations, and for a while the tie which had lasted for so long, and survived so many secret vicissitudes, appeared to loosen....

      But now, again, all that was changed. Lord St. Amant had given up his wanderings on the Continent, and he had come once more very near to Mrs. Tropenell, during this last year. He and Oliver were also better friends than they had ever been; this state of things dated from last winter, for, oddly enough, what had brought them in sympathy had been the death of Godfrey Pavely. They had been constantly together during the days which had followed the banker's mysterious disappearance, and they had worked in close union, each, in a sense, representing Laura, and having a dual authority from her to do what seemed best.

      Still, to-night, excellent as were the terms on which each man felt with the other, neither had anything to say that could not be said better in the company of the ladies. And when in the drawing-room, which now looked so large and empty with only two, where last night there had been twelve, women gathered together about the fireplace, the four talked on, pleasantly, cheerfully, intimately, as they had done at dinner.

      After a while Laura and Oliver slipped away into the smaller drawing-room, and Lord St. Amant and Mrs. Tropenell, hardly aware that the other two had left them, went on gossiping—harking back, as they now so often did, to the old stories, the old human tragedies and comedies, of the neighbourhood.

      Soon after ten Laura and Oliver came back, walking side by side, and Oliver's mother looked up with a proud, fond glance.

      They were a striking, well-matched couple—Laura looking more beautiful than ever to-night, perhaps because she seemed a thought more animated than usual.

      "I've come to say good-night," she exclaimed. "I feel so sleepy! Oliver and I had such a glorious walk this afternoon."

      She bent down and kissed Mrs. Tropenell. And then, unexpectedly, she turned to Lord St. Amant, and put up her face as if she expected him also to kiss her.

      Amused and touched, he bent and brushed his old lips against her soft cheek: "My dear," he exclaimed, "this is very kind of you!"

      And then Oliver stepped forward into the circle of light thrown by the big wood fire.

      He said a little huskily, "My turn next, Laura——" And to the infinite surprise of his mother and of his host, Laura, with an impulsive, tender gesture, reached up towards him, and he, too, brushed her soft face with his lips.

      Then he took her hand, and led her to the door. And Lord St. Amant, quoting Champmélé, turned to his old love: "'Ah! Madame—quelle jolie chose qu'un baiser!'" he murmured, and ere the door had quite closed behind Oliver he, too, had put his arm with a caressing gesture round her shoulder, and drawn her to him, with the whispered words, "Letty—don't think me an old fool!" And then, "Oh, Letty! Do you remember the first time——" And though she made no answer, he knew she did remember, like himself only too well, the wild, winter afternoon, nearer forty than thirty years ago, when they two had been caught alone, far from home, in a great storm—the wild weather responding to their wild mood. They had taken shelter in a deserted, half-ruined barn, a survival of the days when England had still great granaries. And there, throwing everything aside—the insistent promptings of honour, and the less insistent promptings of prudence—St. Amant had kissed Letty....

      He remembered, even now, the thrill of mingled rapture, shame, gratitude, triumph, and stinging self-rebuke, which had accompanied that first long clinging kiss.

      The next day he had left the Abbey for the Continent, and when, at last, he had come back, he had himself again well in hand....

      Only yesterday the shooters had gone by that old seventeenth-century barn, of which nothing now remained but thick low walls, and as he had tramped by the spot, so alone with his memories, if outwardly so companioned, there had swept over his heart, that heart which was still susceptible to every keen emotion, a feeling of agonised regret for what had—and what had not been.

      "Ah, Letty," he said huskily, "you've been the best friend man ever had! Don't you think the time has come for two such old friends as you and I have been never to part? It isn't as if I had a great deal of time left."

      An hour later Lord St. Amant was sitting up in bed, reading the fourth volume of a certain delightful edition of the Memoirs of the Duc de Saint Simon. He was feeling happier than he had felt for a very long time—stirred and touched too, as he had not thought to be again.

      Complacently he reminded himself of the successful, the brilliantly successful, elderly marriages he had known in his time. 'Twas odd when one came to think of it, but he couldn't remember one such which had turned out a failure!

      Dear Letty—who had known how to pass imperceptibly from youth to age with such a fine, measured dignity, while retaining so much which had made her as a girl and as an older woman the most delightful and stimulating of companions. What an agreeable difference her presence would make to his existence as he went slowly down into the shadows! He shuddered a little—the thought of old age, of real old age, becoming suddenly, vividly repugnant.

      Thank God, Letty was very much younger than himself. When he was eighty she would be sixty-three. He tried to put away that thought, the thought that some day he would be infirm, as well as old.

      He looked up from his book.

      How odd to think that Letty had never been in this room, where he had spent so much of his life from boyhood onwards! He longed to show her some of the things he had here—family miniatures, old political caricatures, some of his favourite books—they would all interest her.

      He was glad he had arranged that she should have, on this visit, his dear mother's room. When he had married—close on fifty years ago—his parents had been alive, and later his wife, as the new Lady St. Amant, had not cared to take over her predecessor's apartments. She had been very little here, for soon, poor woman, she had become an invalid—a most disagreeable, selfish invalid. He told himself that after all he had had a certain amount of excuse for—well, for the sort of existence he had led so long. If poor Adelaide had only died twenty years earlier, and he had married Letty—ah, then, he would indeed have become an exemplary character! Yet he had been faithful to Letty—in his fashion....

      No other woman had even approached near the sanctuary where the woman of whom now, to-night, he was able to think as his future wife, had at once become so securely enthroned. It had first been a delicious, if a dangerous, relationship, and, later, a most agreeable friendship. During the last few months she had become rather to his surprise very necessary to him, and these last few days he had felt how pleasant it would be to have Letty always here, at the Abbey, either in his company, or resting, reading, or writing in the room where everything still spoke to him of the long-dead mother who had been so dear to him.

      Of course they would wait till Oliver and Laura were married—say, till some time in February or March: and then, when those two rather tiresome younger people were disposed of, they, he and Letty, would slip up quietly to London, and, in the presence of perhaps two or three old friends, they would be made man and wife.

      He reflected complacently that nothing in his life would be changed, save that Letty would be there, at the Abbey, as she had been the last few days, always ready to hear with eager interest anything he had to say, always with her point of view sufficiently unlike his own to give flavour,

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