CHAPTER XVI.

CIRCE’S EYES.

Nothing in the whole house was good enough for Marcus Wray. Ismay saw that as soon as she came down to breakfast.

Cristiane, behind the great urn, was changed from yesterday; a peace was on her face, and for the first time since the news of her father’s death her eyes bore no traces of a night spent in tears. Marcus Wray had built better than he knew when he came as the one friend who had done the very last things for Gaspard le Marchant. The news had spread like wild-fire through the household. Thomas, the old butler, waited on the strange gentleman from London with a noiseless assiduity he had never shown to either of the Trelanes.

“Must you go this morning?” Cristiane said wistfully. “I suppose there is very little temptation to stay in a quiet house like this!”

“There is every temptation,” Wray returned, with the frankness that was so good an imitation, “to a tired man who has found old friends here and the kindest of hospitality”--with a glance at Cristiane that made Ismay wince. “But I am afraid I must go and look after my bread and butter. I am one of the working-classes, Miss Le Marchant.”

“But you don’t work always! If you have a Saturday and Sunday to spare, will you remember you are wanted here?”

For the man seemed a link with her dead father that she could not lose.

Wray glanced at Mrs. Trelane.

“Cristiane is right, Mr. Wray,” she said. “We shall always be glad to see you, though, of course, at present we do not see any one but old friends.”

“Well, we live and learn,” reflected Ismay. “Fancy mother saying she will be glad to see that man. She must be in a blue fright.”

She heard in utter silence an arrangement made which would bring Marcus Wray from London on the next Saturday fortnight. She had that much time in which to see Cylmer.

In the morning sunshine what she had overheard last night in the dusk seemed monstrous and absurd. Yet there sat the man whose profession was blackmail, and there sat the woman who feared him, pale, worn, and harried, in the dainty breakfast-room.

“There’s plenty of time, that is the only thing,” Ismay thought, as she saw Cristiane leave the room with Wray and go out by the window onto the terrace. The morning was almost warm, and they walked up and down there, like old friends, a hideous sight to the girl who watched them over her empty teacup.

“Plenty of time; he is too clever to hurry and make a scandal in the country.” She wondered morbidly how he would set about his hideous end when the time was ripe.

“Nonsense!” she said to herself smartly. “I shall have the upper hand long before that, though I don’t know how yet.”

She rose quickly and went out through the open French window. Cristiane was alone now, and Ismay had no mind for a solitary conversation with Mr. Wray, who had come into the house by the hall door to get ready for his train.

“Mother can talk to him if she chooses, not I!” she thought, with a shrug of her shoulders. “I am a fool to mix myself up in it, I believe, and yet I haven’t much choice. Some one must look after this baby”--with a grudging glance at the girl whose bare head shone ruddy in the winter sun.

Cristiane slipped her arm through Ismay’s, a trick the latter hated, yet she dared not take away her arm.

“I feel so much better, Ismay,” she said softly, “as if I had been near father. That friend of your mother’s has been very kind.”

“Very,” said Ismay dryly.

“Don’t you like him?”

“I don’t like him at all. But, of course, he has been very kind to you.”

“What is the matter with him?” Cristiane was up in arms at once. “Nobody who wasn’t nice would do all he has done for utter strangers. You have no real reason for disliking him, have you?”

“A very small one,” Miss Trelane returned calmly. “I’ll tell it to you some day--perhaps.”

“Well, I have a very big reason for liking him, and I think you’re rather horrid about it,” she replied injuredly. “Don’t you want him to come back again?”

“Not particularly,” said the girl, with an inward longing that he might break his neck on the way to the station.

Cristiane laughed.

“How funny you are! You look at the man as if he were a toad, and you only say ‘not particularly’ when I ask you if you mind his coming here.”

“Well, then, I am sorry you asked him, if you must know.”

“I wanted him,” Cristiane rejoined obstinately, “and I should be very ungrateful if I didn’t.”

Ismay laughed; it was safer not to go any further, and there would be no good in driving Cristiane.

“Gratitude is a vice; you never know where it may lead you,” she remarked. “He is coming to say good-by to you. I shall go in;” and she vanished. A thrill of relief went through her when she heard the crunching of wheels over the gravel as Marcus Wray drove off. When their last sound had died away, she stepped out on the terrace again and stood staring, with an incredulous joy that was almost pain.

Mr. Cylmer was coming up the avenue, a sight to make any woman look with pleasure at him, in his spotless breeches and boots, and the scarlet coat that showed to the utmost advantage every line of his strong, splendid figure. He was walking and leading a very lame horse.

“Why, here’s Miles!” Cristiane cried wonderingly. “And his horse can hardly crawl. I wonder what is the matter.”

She forgot there had been any gap in his coming and going to Marchant’s Hold; his arriving at this unseemly hour was so like the old days, when he had always been welcome.

“What on earth has happened to you?” she called, as he came nearer.

“Molly strained her shoulder at the bank down by your outfields,” he returned, stopping in front of them, his handsome head glossy in the sun as he lifted his hat. “So I came to ask you if I might put her in your stable instead of taking her all the way home. I don’t know how it happened; slipped, I fancy; she didn’t fall.”

“I knew you’d do it some day. You go at your banks too fast.” Cristiane frowned as she touched the mare’s shoulder with knowledgable fingers. “Poor Molly! It’s a shame.”

Mr. Cylmer was annoyed. Few men rode with more judgment than he, and he knew it.

“You needn’t think I like it, any more than Molly,” he returned, a trifle crossly.

“Come along to the stables,” Cristiane said. “The sooner she is seen to the better. I’m glad you brought her. Come on, Ismay.”

She had had time to recollect that Miles, who had forgotten her in his sorrow, could remember now that she could be useful. She marched on in front, leading the limping mare. Ismay and Cylmer were left to follow.

“You’ve cut your hand,” said Ismay, and her voice fell softly on his ears, that Cristiane’s words had left tingling. “It’s bleeding.”

“It’s all right,” he replied shamefacedly. “I was stooping to make a gap in the hedge for Molly, and she trod on it.”

It was cut and bruised so that it ached abominably. He winced with pain as he tried to move it.

Ismay’s handkerchief, white, filmy, fine, and smelling of nothing but fresh linen, was out in a second.

“There is no sense in getting yourself all horrid with it,” she said practically. “Hold out your hand.”

There was an ugly circular jag across the back of the fingers, where the horse’s shoe had come.

“It’s too beastly,” he said. He did not want her to look at the mingled blood and dirt that covered his hand.

But she only laughed, a little low laugh, like a woman comforting the hurt of a child.

“Hold it out,” she repeated, and through the cool linen he could feel the touch of her slim, deft fingers, a touch that somehow made him thrill.

Cristiane had never even seen his hand!

She stood by while he and a groom saw to Molly, and then as they turned away the bandage caught her eye.

“What a baby you are, Miles!” she laughed. “Fancy binding up your whole hand for a cut!”

“It’s smashed flat,” he returned quietly. “And you’re an unsympathetic little wretch. By the way, didn’t I meet a stranger driving down your avenue?”

“He isn’t a stranger,” she retorted. “It was Mr. Wray, a friend of--father’s.” Her lips quivered suddenly.

“Wray? I never heard of him”--soberly.

Cristiane stamped her foot.

“Well, you hear now!” she cried. “Ismay has been horrid about him, and now I suppose you’re going to be; but I won’t stay and hear it. She can tell you why”--with a great sob--“why he came!” and before the astonished Cylmer could breathe, she had run away like a hare, in a very tempest of tears.

“What’s the matter with her? She is not at all like herself!” he exclaimed.

“She’s unstrung, poor little soul! And I don’t wonder. He came to tell her he was with Sir Gaspard when he died.”

“What!” But after that one quick word he listened in silence, as Ismay told him all she saw fit to tell.

“Why did she say you had been horrid about him?” he asked as she finished.

“I don’t like him. Mother and I knew him in London. He is so ugly--oh! so ugly that I shiver when I look at him,” she returned lightly, yet he saw there was something behind her words. Even in a casual glance there had been something repulsive to him, too, in the face of the man who had passed him so quickly; not a nice person to have make love to you, as he guessed he had done to Miss Trelane.

“Send for me if he comes again and you want to get rid of him,” he said as lightly as she. “I’d like to see him, too”--with sudden gravity. “It was strange, his being with Sir Gaspard at the end!”

“He is a strange man, here to-day and gone to-morrow.” She spoke wearily. “But, of course, I really know very little about him. I was angry because his coming upset Cristiane so.”

“Poor child.” But the tone in his voice was not that with which he would have spoken of the girl a fortnight before. “Time and letting alone are what she wants.” He glanced at the house as they neared it.

“Do you think I am to be admitted?” he said. “Is your mother----” He did not finish.

“My mother can afford to forgive you”--with unconscious bitterness. “And Cristiane would not like it if you did not come in.”

“I don’t think it would disturb her,” he replied dryly. But he followed Ismay into the house.

They sat by the hall fire, that glowed with a gentle warmth, and talked softly of nothings; with one consent of anything but the things that were past. As the girl’s green eyes met his, the spell of her beauty fell on him, till his love for Cristiane seemed a childish dream. Soft, white, sinuous, she sat in her great chair, and as she looked at him Miles Cylmer was powerlessly under her sway.

“I will come to-morrow to bring back the horse,” he said softly, forgetting it was not his house. “May I?”

And his blood was quick in him as she gave a little languid nod, so sweet and full of sorcery were her marvelous eyes.

If he had dared he would have told her then and there that she was the only woman in the world for him. He knew now that pity and affection and an idle heart had made him fancy he cared for Cristiane.

“You don’t hear what I’m saying, Mr. Cylmer!”

Ismay’s little laugh roused him, and the man who had been loved by many women in his time looked up in boyish confusion.

“I beg your pardon. What was it?”

“It was like me, a thing of no importance,” she answered lazily. “But I wonder where your thoughts are”--and her hand, as if by accident, covered for one instant her scarlet lips.

Was she a witch who had read his thoughts? For all he knew, she might be a very Circe, false as water, and yet he would have sworn that she was heavenly true.

“I will tell you where they were some day,” he said, wondering if all the time she knew. For as she talked and he looked at her the remembrance of her lips on his in that kiss he had taken on that morning at his gates had come back to him with shame.

He had kissed her as if she had been a pretty dairymaid and he a king.

Now his soul went out in longing to have her for his own, to kiss her as his queen, his wife. How had he dared to think of her in any other way?

Her history, her mother, were as nothing to him in face of her loveliness that bewitched him.

When at last his borrowed horse came to the door he rose reluctantly.

“Till to-morrow. I must bring it back, you know,” he said, and at something in his eyes she flushed, ever so faintly.

“Till to-morrow,” she echoed quietly.

And he never imagined that she watched him out of sight as he rode away, her heart fairly plunging with rapture.