CHAPTER X.

A KISS.

Ismay went out into the clear, soft sunlight, treading lightly in her smart, thick boots, with joy in her heart.

Things had played into her hands at last. Toward half-past two o’clock, warm and lovely with her quick walk, she stood at Miles Cylmer’s gates. They were heavy iron, hung from carved stone posts, “Cylmer’s Ferry” cut deeply on them. She saw the significance of the name, for a hundred yards in front of her a narrow river ran sluggishly, cutting through Cylmer’s property for miles. There was a high ivy-covered wall on both sides of the road, and the view, except of the river, was limited.

Miss Trelane glanced up and down.

“Very considerate of Mr. Cylmer to have no lodge,” she observed aloud. “A lodge-keeper and six children would have embarrassed me very much.”

She marched deliberately to the ivy-covered wall opposite the gate, and swung herself up with the ease of long practise over Mrs. Barlow’s wall at school. She had come up-hill all the way from Marchant’s Hold, and now from the top of the six-foot wall the country lay before her like a map.

She seated herself comfortably, and began with a capital appetite on her lunch. As she took the peaches from her pocket she gave a little nod of satisfaction. Far off down in the valley she could see the hounds being taken home. There would be no late waiting for Mr. Cylmer, since there had evidently been no sport to speak of. The peaches had rubbed against her pocket and stained its smart green lining.

“Bother!” said the girl, with the thriftiness of poverty. She turned the pocket inside out to dry.

“But the peaches are all right,” she added, as she finished them and wiped her fingers on the fine damask napkin which she neatly bestowed down a convenient hole in the wall. There were plenty more at Marchant Hold, and it was greasy.

For a moment her back was to the road. She did not see a man riding toward her, and turned with a real start, to discover Miles Cylmer on a big chestnut horse within ten yards of her. The sunlight fell on his handsome, hard face, his tawny mustache, his splendid figure in his red coat and white riding-breeches. The sight of him brought dismay to Ismay’s heart. She forgot all she had meant to say in sheer foolish excitement at seeing him.

“I--I can’t get down,” she said childishly.

Cylmer stopped his horse and sat staring at her in utter amazement.

Who was this who sat on his wall like a lovely nymph, her water-green eyes on his, her flaxen hair glinting like barley in the sun? There flashed up before him the lights of the Palace Theater, a slim girl in black who was hungry.

“I beg your pardon,” he stammered in his surprise. Could there be two girls in the world with such scarlet lips and strange eyes, for surely this could not be the lonely girl he had taken home that night? How could she get here?

Ismay Trelane smiled in his perplexed face that slow, witch-smile that was her best weapon.

“Don’t you know me, Mr. Cylmer? I know you, you see, and--please take me down!” She held out her hands entreatingly.

Cylmer, like a man in a dream, swung himself off his horse and slipped his arm through the reins.

He had seen Cristiane at the meet, lovely in her blue habit, had ridden up to greet her, and been smartly snubbed for his pains. Somehow it had stung unbearably. And the joy on the face of the girl he had never thought to see again was like balm to his wounds.

Ismay, seated on the wall, leaned down and gave him both hands; her eyes met his, strange and deep, with something in them that brought the blood to his face.

“I told you we should meet again!” she cried, with soft delight in her voice. “Are you glad to see me?”

Cylmer lifted her down, setting her safely clear of his fretting horse. Her queer beauty dazzled him.

“Very glad,” he answered slowly.

For the first time in her life Ismay Trelane’s eyes fell before the look of other eyes.

Cylmer stooped and kissed her lips.

* * * * *

For a moment the whole world swung dizzily to Ismay Trelane. A golden mist blotted out the bare trees and ivied walls; a sound as of many waters was in her ears. She staggered helplessly, and from far, far away heard a voice that was very low and pitiful.

“My little girl, don’t look like that. I was a brute! Did I frighten you?”

Was it fright that made her feel her own blood running in her veins? She did not know. With a sharp wrench she was clear of him, and stood leaning against his horse’s shoulder, her breath coming fast and hard.

Cristiane would have stamped her foot at him. Ismay only looked him full in the face.

“Why did you do that?” she said quietly, though her hand went to her breast as if something hurt her.

Cylmer bit his lip.

“Because I----” he hesitated. The truth, because she was so fair, would be an insult.

“Never mind looking for a reason,” she said; and he saw that even her lips were white.

“You did it, and that’s enough. If you will move your horse out of the way I will go home.”

She shook from head to foot. He had kissed her, as a man kisses a girl he has met alone at a music-hall, and she had kissed him like a nun who kisses the cross.

Her voice cut, but something in it made Miles Cylmer take off his hat and stand bareheaded before her.

“I won’t even ask you to forgive me.” His voice was low and sweet as perhaps but one other woman knew it could be. “I behaved unpardonably. Yet if you can believe me, I was so much more than glad to see you that I--I forgot myself.”

“And me!” she interrupted with a hard little smile. “You remembered me as a toy: you greeted me as one. If it is of any interest to you I may tell you the toy is--broken!” She made a little gesture and turned away without looking at him.

Cylmer, leading his horse, was at her side before she had taken ten steps.

“Don’t go away like this,” he said, a shamed color on his tanned cheek. “I deserve all you can say to me, and more. I only want you to let me beg your pardon. I won’t”--his keen eyes very sweet, very honest--“even ask you to forgive me.”

“It would be of no use if you did,” she returned quietly. “I never forgave anything I had against any one in all my life. You were the first person I ever knew who was kind to me, and now you have made me sorry that you were.”

Her even, level voice had an implacable ring to it. Cylmer, disgusted with himself, went off on a new tack.

“You looked so tired that night, and so childlike,” he said, with a little pause before the last word. Ismay turned on him, her eyes full of somber fire.

“You thought me some little milliner,” she cried superbly. “Yet you treated me there like a lady, while to-day----” she shrugged her lovely shoulders as though she were at a loss for words. Yet presently, as she went on, her tone softened.

“I had run away that night. I had just come home from school and had no dresses fit to wear. My mother had some one to dinner, and I was too shabby to be seen. It was dull sitting alone, so I took all the money I had and went out. The reason I was hungry was that I wouldn’t eat the dinner that was sent up to me; it was horrid,” with a little laugh.

“But it was a mad thing to do; don’t you know that?” he said wonderingly.

“I didn’t then; I do now.” Her self-possession had come back to her; her smile had that indefinite womanly quality in it that had struck him long ago, when he had been puzzled as to her age.

“You mean I have taught you this morning! Will you give me leave to try and make you forget that?”

“You may never see me again.”

“I will if you do not move to another planet,” remarked Mr. Cylmer deliberately, “or tell the butler you are never at home to me.”

“I cannot do either,” she said, with an indifference that he never dreamed was imitation. “I have no butler, for one thing, and I don’t mean to die if I can help it.”

“My dear little lady, I didn’t mean that.”

“Didn’t you? I do! I have a horror of dying.” She shivered suddenly, as if neither the afternoon nor the quick blood in her veins could warm her. “To die, and be put in the cold, damp earth, and not even know the sun shone over your grave! I often think of it, just because it terrifies me.”

“You have all your life to live first,” he said, with a wandering glance at her. She piqued him with her changes of mood.

“Life is very amusing,” she observed calmly. “You see so much you are not meant to see. Now I saw why you kissed me just now.”

Mr. Cylmer’s bronzed cheek showed a faint trace of red.

“I was an ungentlemanly beast,” he cried hotly. “Be kind and let us forget it.”

Ismay looked at him, and once more her beauty startled him.

“Forget it, by all means--if you can!” she retorted. “But I don’t think you will. Good-by, I am going home now.” And before he could speak she had slipped through a gap in the hedge, which, she had seen as he came, led by a short cut to Marchant’s Hold.

“But you haven’t even told me your name, or how you know mine, or where you live,” Mr. Cylmer spoke to the empty air apparently, but a light laugh, sweet as spring, answered him from the other side of the hedge.

“You can find out all those things by diligence,” returned a voice full of mockery.

Mr. Cylmer scrambled hastily through the gap in the hedge, reins in hand, and his horse’s head pushing through behind him.

“You’d better tell me,” he observed calmly. “I might tell, you know, how you went to see the world one night.”

“Ah, but you won’t!” She was suddenly radiant, suddenly conscious that nothing on earth would have bound him to her like that kiss. “You have too much honor, Mr. Cylmer. Now, I have no honor at all. I could tell my mother that you spoke to me without any introduction.”

He laughed, his eyes very sweet and kindly, as he said: “You won’t, will you?”

“No,” she answered slowly, “and if you ever meet me it must be for the first time. You won’t stammer and be surprised or anything, will you?”

“No, I think I can promise you that,” he said bluntly. “Only let me see you; it was chaff, you know, about my telling tales.”

The girl looked at him with hard scrutiny, and as he met her eyes he could have cut his hand off for this morning’s work. For her face was strangely innocent, and pitifully young to be that of a girl who was allowed to wander about by herself to a music-hall.

“My dear little lady,” he said slowly, “do you know that I can never forgive myself? I don’t deserve your ever speaking to me or trusting me again. And yet, I ask you to let me be your friend. Will you?”

A little quiver shook her. Would he really be her friend? Yet, after all, why not? But like a dream there rose before her the image of Cristiane le Marchant, young, lovely, and rich; behind that the vision of Marcus Wray, his thick red lips mocking her in her fancy. What could either of them have to do with Miles Cylmer? Yet she was cold with fright, standing there in the winter sun, lest Cristiane le Marchant might have more of Cylmer’s heart than she knew, and lest Marcus Wray might find her hiding-place with his secret that could make her forswear the sight of Cylmer’s face for very terror.

She drew a sharp breath.

Cylmer’s face grew blank as he looked at her.

“You won’t! You can’t forgive me?” he said gently. “Very well.”

Ismay put her hand in his, but with the gesture of a woman, not a girl.

“Be my friend, then!” she said slowly. “Promise me that you will believe in me, and trust me. No one ever did that.”

“I will trust you through anything,” he said, puzzled. “It is a bargain; you are to forgive me, and I am to be your friend for always.”

He clasped her hand hard, as if it were the hand of a comrade, and the blood came red to her cheek.

“Won’t you tell who you are?” he asked, smiling at the fancy that kept her nameless, as he released her hand.

“Don’t look so startled, it’s only the station bus!” For there was a sound of wheels on the road behind him. It was a long instant before she answered, and when she spoke she looked no longer the same girl.

“I am no one--of any importance,” she said, with a languid nod; then she turned away and was gone without even a good-by.

Cylmer was forced to go through the hedge, outside of which his horse was fretting and plunging with impatience.

“I’d swear she never kissed a man before,” he mused as he mounted. “And she’s right, I can’t forget it. I wonder who she’s staying with.” Not for a moment connecting her with the strange woman at Marchant’s Hold.

Yet the girl in his thoughts had at that moment forgotten all about him.

She was running swiftly toward Marchant’s Hold, with a deadly terror at her heart. It was senseless, unreasonable, yet the glimpse she had had through the hedge of the occupant of the station bus was so like a glimpse of Marcus Wray that she had turned sick.

It was like waking from a dream of warmth and happiness, to find death in the house. Yet it could not be that Wray had found them.

“He would never think of us in a respectable house,” she thought, as she hurried on.

“But if he did, we have no more diamonds; we can’t buy him off any more.”

She reached an open field, below her in the level valley rose the strong towers of Marchant’s Hold, with the flag of England’s glory flying on the highest of them. As she looked the flag went suddenly down to half-mast. Some one, a Le Marchant born, must be lying dead!

Ismay Trelane, who hated death, would have stayed away for hours, but she dared not. With lagging feet she came at last to the great hall door, with its motto over it: “What Marchant held let Marchant hold,” its pride a mockery, grim and trenchant, for there was a streamer of crape on the door-handle.

A deadly terror of being out there alone came over her. She pulled desperately at the door-handle. If she had seen Marcus Wray he would be on his way to Marchant’s Hold; she would die if he came and caught her here alone.

“Thomas,” she cried. “What’s the matter?”

The old butler who let her in could hardly answer.

“My master’s dead, Miss Trelane,” he whispered, “killed in a railway accident.”

“Dead!” she fairly staggered. That would mean turning out into the world again. She ran wildly past him up-stairs to her mother’s room.