"You are late," said Lady Munro. "Had you forgotten that you were going to take us to the theatre?"
She was sitting alone in the firelight, one dainty slippered foot on the burnished fender.
Sir Douglas looked sharply round the room without replying. "Is Mona here?" he said.
"No; she could not spare enough time to come to dinner. We are to call for her."
Sir Douglas frowned.
"That's always the way. Upon my soul, for all we see of her, she might as well be at—Borrowness!"
"Where in the world is that?" asked Lady Munro languidly. Then, with a sudden change of tone, "I have got such a piece of news for you," she said. "Another of our friends is engaged to be married."
"Not Dickinson?" he said, glancing at the foreign letter in her hand.
"Yes; the Indian mail came in to-day. Guess who the lady is?"
"You know I hate guessing. Go on!"
"Miss Colquhoun!"
"What an extraordinary thing!"
"Isn't it? It seems he wanted the thing settled before he sailed, but it took the exchange of a few letters to decide the question. I must say it is a great disappointment to me. I am quite sure the Sahib cared for Mona, and I did think she would take pity on him in the long-run."
"How ridiculous!" said Sir Douglas testily.
He wanted Mona to marry, because that was the natural and fitting destiny for a young and attractive woman; but it was quite another thing to think of her as the wife of any given man.
"Of course we all know that Mona ought to marry a duke," said Evelyn quietly. She had entered the room a moment before, looking very fair and sweet in her white evening dress. "But even if the duke could be brought to see it, which is not absolutely certain,—I suppose even dukes are sometimes blind to their best interests—oh, father, don't!"
For Sir Douglas was pinching her ear unmercifully.
"You little sauce-box!" he said indignantly, but he did not look displeased. Evelyn had learned that approaching womanhood gave her the right to take liberties with her father which his wife would scarcely have ventured upon.
"Well, whatever may be the cause of it," said Lady Munro, "Mona is not half so bright as she was a year ago."
Evelyn laughed.
"Do you remember what Sydney Smith said? 'Macaulay has improved of late,—flashes of silence!' Lucy told her yesterday that, to our great surprise, we find we may open our lips now-a-days, without having our heads snapped off with an epigram."
"It's all nonsense," said Sir Douglas loftily. "Mona is not changed a bit. You did not understand her, that is all."
But in truth no one had wondered over the change in Mona so much as he. He was perfectly certain that she did not care for the Sahib, and he had come at last to the conclusion that, with a girl like Mona, incessant hospital work was quite sufficient to account for the alteration. To his partial mind Mona's increased womanliness more than made up for her loss of sparkle. When friendship and affection are removed alike from all danger of starvation and of satiety, they are very hard to kill.
At this moment Nubboo announced dinner, and an hour or so later the carriage stopped at the door of Mona's rooms in Gower Street.
Much as Sir Douglas spoiled his niece, she "knew her place," as Lucy expressed it, better than to keep him waiting; and the reverberations of the knocker had not died away when she appeared.
Sir Douglas ran his eye with satisfaction over the details of her toilet. It was an excellent thing for her, in this time of hard work and heart-hunger, that she felt the bounden necessity of living up to the level of Sir Douglas's expectations. She cared intensely for his approbation; partly for her own sake, partly because to him she represented the whole race of "learned women"; and she could not well have had a more friendly, frank, and fastidious critic.
The theatre was crowded when they entered their box. Like many habitual theatre-goers Sir Douglas hated boxes, but he had applied for seats too late to get anything else. It was the first night of a new melodrama,—new in actual date, but in all essentials old as the history of man. A noble magnificent hero; a sweet loyal wife; a long period of persecution, separation, and mutual devotion; a happy and triumphant reunion.
Judged by every canon of modern realistic art, it was stagey and conventional to the point of being ridiculous; but the acting was brilliant, and even Sir Douglas and Mona found it difficult to escape the enthusiasm of that crowded house. Evelyn and her mother were moved almost to tears before the end. The one saw in the play the ideal that lay in the shadows before her, the other the ideal that her own life had missed.
"Have you heard the news about the Sahib?" Lady Munro enquired in the pause that followed the first act.
"Yes," said Mona, flushing slightly; "I had a few lines from him by to-day's mail."
"Do you think the match a desirable one?"
"Ideal, so far as one can foresee. They won't water down each other's enthusiasms, as most married people do."
"Douglas remembers Miss Colquhoun as a quaint, old-fashioned child—not at all pretty. I suppose she has improved?"
"I suppose she has," Mona answered reflectively: "she is certainly immensely admired now."
"It was such an odd coincidence; we heard this morning of the engagement of another of our friends—Colonel Monteith's son; I forget whether you have met him?"
"No; I have met the Colonel. Who is the son engaged to?"
"Nobody very great. A Miss Nash, a girl with plenty of money. George inherits a nice little estate from his uncle, and he had to marry something to keep it up on. By the way, Lucy Reynolds must have mentioned him to you. She saw a good deal of him at Cannes." And Lady Munro looked somewhat anxiously at her niece.
"I rather think she did," Mona answered, pretending to stifle a yawn. "But Lucy met so many people while she was with you——"
The rise of the curtain for the second act obviated the necessity of finishing the sentence, and Lady Munro did not resume the subject.
As soon as Sir Douglas had left the box for the second time, it was entered by a stout man, with a vast expanse of shirt front, and a bunch of showy seals.
"I thought I could not be mistaken," he said with a marked Scotch accent, holding out his hand to Mona. "I have been watching you from the dress circle ever since the beginning of the play, Miss Maclean; and I thought I must just come and pay my respects."
Lady Munro looked utterly aghast, and the ease of Mona's manner rather belied her feelings, as she took his outstretched hand.
"That was very kind of you," she said simply. "Mr Cookson, my aunt, Lady Munro,—Miss Munro."
Mr Cookson gasped, and there was an awkward pause. Rachel Simpson had not taken with her, across the Atlantic, all the complications in her cousin's life.
Fortunately, at this moment two young men came in, and Mona was able to keep Mr Cookson pretty much to herself.
"I hope you are all well at Borrowness," she said cordially.
"Thanks, we are wonderful, considering. It'll be great news for Matilda that I came across you."
"Please give her my love."
There was another pause. Mona was longing to ask about Mrs Hamilton and Dr Dudley, but she did not dare.
"It was a great thing for Matilda getting to know you," Mr Cookson went on. "We often wish you were back among us. If ever you care to renew the homely old associations a bit, our spare room is always at your disposal, you know."
Care to renew the old associations! What else in life did she care so much about? In her eagerness she forgot even the presence of her aunt.
"I should like very much to see the old place again," she said. "You are very kind."
Mr Cookson's good-natured face beamed with delighted surprise.
"It isn't looking its best now," he said; "but any time you care to come, we shall be only too delighted."
"Thank you. If it would not be too much trouble to Mrs Cookson, I could come for a day or two at the beginning of January. I shall never forget the fairy frost we had at that time last winter."
Mr Cookson laughed.
"We will be proud to see you at any time," he said; "but I am afraid we have not enough interest with the clerk of the weather to get up a frost like that again. I never remember to have seen the like of it."
He turned to Lady Munro with a vague idea that he ought to be making himself agreeable to her.
"My girls were wishing they could carry the leaves and things home," he said; "it seemed such a waste like."
Mona inwardly blessed her aunt for the gracious smile with which she listened to these words; but, whatever Lady Munro's feelings might be, it was extremely difficult for her to be ungracious to any one.
The Fates, after all, were kind. Mr Cookson left the box before Sir Douglas returned.
"My dear Mona!" was all Lady Munro could say the first moment they were left alone.
"Poor dear Aunt Maud!" Mona said caressingly; "it is a shame that she should be subjected to such a thing. But never mind, dear; he lives hundreds of miles away from here, and you are never likely to see him again."
Lady Munro groaned. Fortunately, she had heard nothing of the invitation, and in another minute she was once more absorbed in the interest of the play.
The party drove back to Gower Street in silence. Sir Douglas alighted at once, and held out his hand to help Mona.
"Many thanks," she said warmly; "good night."
"No; I am coming in for ten minutes. I want to speak to you. Home, Charles!"
Mona opened the door, and led the way up the dimly lighted staircase to her cheerful sitting-room.
"Now, Mona," he said, as soon as the door was closed, "I want the whole truth of this Borrowness business."
Mona started visibly. Had he met Mr Cookson in the corridor, seized him by the throat, and demanded an account of his actions? No, that was clearly impossible.
"Who has been talking to you?" she said resignedly.
"I met Colonel Lawrence at the club to-day."
Mona threw herself into the rocking-chair with a sigh of capitulation.
"If you have heard his story," she said, "you need not come to me for farther details. He knows more than I do myself. They say down at Borrowness that he is 'as guid as an auld almanac.'"
But Sir Douglas declined to be amused.
"How long were you there?" he said severely.
"Six months."
"And you have kept me in the dark about it all this time? I think I deserved greater confidence from you."
"I think you did," she said frankly; "but you see, Uncle Douglas, I promised to go at a time when I only knew you by name, and I had not the least idea then that you would be so kind to me. I felt bound to keep my word, and I did not feel quite sure that you would approve of it."
"Approve of it!" he exclaimed indignantly.
"But I always meant to tell you about it sooner or later."
Mona sighed. She had expected the whole story to come out in connection with her engagement to Dr Dudley. And now that engagement seemed to be becoming more and more problematical.
"Particularly later," said Sir Douglas sarcastically. "It is nearly a year now since you left."
"Yes; but that isn't exactly due to intentional secrecy on my part. The fact is, my visit has some painful associations for me now."
"So I should think," he said. "Is it really true, Mona, that you stood behind a counter?—that you kept a shop?"
"Perfectly true," said Mona, meeting his gaze without flinching. "I confess I had no special training for the work, but I did not do it so badly, after all."
The least suspicion of a smile played about the corners of his mouth, but he suppressed it instantly.
"And when," he asked, "may we expect your next attack of shopkeeping?"
"Oh, did Colonel Lawrence not tell you? My cousin sailed for America months ago."
He looked relieved.
"To your infinite regret, no doubt."
"I am afraid it is a great weight off my mind."
"And is that the end of the affair, or have you any more cousins down there?"
"I have one or two friends; no relatives."
"Then there is nothing to take you back again?"
Poor Mona!
"I met a Borrowness acquaintance in the theatre to-night," she said, "and promised to go down for a day or two at Christmas. Uncle Douglas, you did not ask to see my genealogical tree before you took me to Norway. I am proud of the fact that my grandfather rose from the ranks; and, even if I were not, I could not consent to draw all my acquaintances from one set. There are four links in the chain—your world, you, me, my world. Your world won't let you go, and I can't let my world go. If you must break the chain, you can only do it in one place."
"I don't believe you would care a straw if I did."
"I should care intensely," said Mona, her eyes filling with tears. "It seems like a fairy tale that a brilliant man of the world like you should be so good to commonplace me; and, besides—you know I love you almost as if you were my father. But, indeed, now that I know you and Aunt Maud, you may trust me in future always to think of what is due to you."
She had risen from her chair as she spoke, and he strode across the hearth-rug and kissed her affectionately.
"There, there," he said, "she shall dictate her own terms! Thank heaven at least that that old frump is well across the Atlantic!"
He went away, and Mona was left alone, to think over the events of the day. Doris and the Sahib, Monteith and Lucy,—it was the old tale over again,—"The one shall be taken, and the other left." How strange it seemed that life should run smoothly for Doris, with all her grand power of self-surrender; and that poor little Lucy, with her innocent, childlike expectation of happiness, should be called upon to suffer!
"——so horribly," Mona added; but in her heart she was beginning to hope that Lucy had not been so hard hit after all.
And for herself, how did the equation run? As the Sahib is to Doris, so is somebody to me? or, as Monteith is to Lucy, so is somebody to me? No, no, no! That was impossible. Monteith had never treated Lucy as Dr Dudley had treated her.
During all these months what had caused Mona the acutest suffering was an anguish of shame. It never remained with her long, but it recurred whenever she was worn out and depressed. She had long since realised that, from an outsider's point of view, her experience that winter night was in no way so exceptional as she had supposed,—that there were thousands of men who would give such expression to a moment's transient passion. But surely, surely Dr Dudley was not one of these, and surely any man must see that with a woman like her it must be everything or nothing! If he had indeed torn her soul out and given her nothing in return, why then—then—— But she never could finish the sentence, for the recollection of a hundred words and actions and looks came back, and turned the gall into sweetness. And she always ended with the same old cry—"If only I had told him about my life, if only I had given him no shadow of a reason to think that I had deceived him!"
But to-night it seemed as if the long uncertainty must be coming to an end at last. If she went to Borrowness at Christmas, as she had promised, she could not fail to hear something of her friend, and she might even see him.