The Shadow of the East Part 7

The anxiety faded from the Mother Superior's face and she sat down with an air of relief, motioning Craven to a chair. But with a curt bow he remained standing. He had no wish to prolong the interview beyond what courtesy and business demanded. He listened with a variety of feelings while the Nun spoke. Her earnestness he could not fail to perceive, but it required a decided effort to concentrate, and follow her soft well modulated voice.

She spoke slowly, with feeling that broke at times the tone she strove to make dispa.s.sionate.

"I am glad for Gillian's sake that at last, after all these years, there has come one who will be concerned with her future. She has no vocation for the conventual life and--I was beginning to become anxious. For ourselves, we shall miss her more than it is possible to say. She had been with us so long, she has become very dear to us. I have dreaded that her father would one day claim her. She has been spared that contamination--G.o.d forgive me that I should speak so." For a moment she was silent, her eyes bent on her hands lying loosely clasped in her lap.

"Gillian is not altogether friendless," she resumed, "she will go to you with a little more knowledge of the world than can be gained within these old walls." She glanced round the panelled room with half-sad affection. "She is popular and has spent vacations in the homes of some of her fellow pupils. She has a very decided personality, and a facility for attracting affection. She is sensitive and proud--pa.s.sionate even at times. She can be led but not driven. I tell you all this, _Monsieur_, not censoriously but that it may help you in dealing with a character that is extraordinarily complex, with a nature that both demands and repels affection, that longs for and yet scorns sympathy." She looked at Craven anxiously. His complete attention was claimed at last. A new conception of his unknown ward was forcing itself upon him, so that any humour there might have been in the situation died suddenly and the difficulties of the undertaking soared. The Mother Superior smothered a sigh. His att.i.tude was baffling, his expression inscrutable. Had her words touched him, had she said what was best for the welfare of the girl who was so dear to her, and whose departure she felt so keenly? How would she fare at this man's hands? What lay behind his stern face and sombre tragic eyes? Her lips moved in silent prayer, but when she spoke her voice was serene as before.

"There is yet another thing that I must speak of. Gillian has an unusual gift." A sentence in Locke's letter flashed into Craven's mind.

"She doesn't _dance_?" he asked, in some dismay.

"Dance, _Monsieur_--in a convent?" Then she pitied his hot confusion and smiled faintly.

"Is dancing so unusual--in the world? No, Gillian sketches--portraits.

Her talent is real. She does not merely draw a faithful likeness, her studies are revelations of soul. I do not think she knows herself how her effects are obtained, they grow almost unconsciously, but they result always in the same strange delineation of character. It was so impossible to ignore this exceptional gift that we procured for her the best teacher in Paris, and continued her lessons even after--" She stopped abruptly and Craven finished the broken sentence.

"Even after the fees ceased," he said dryly. "For how many years has my ward lived on your charity, Reverend Mother?"

She raised a protesting hand.

"Ah--charity. It is hardly the word--" she fenced.

He took out a cheque book.

"How much is owing, for everything?" he said bluntly.

She sought for a book in a bureau standing against the rosewood panelling and, scanning it, gave a sum with evident reluctance.

"Gillian has never been told, but it is ten years since _Monsieur_ Locke paid anything." There was diffidence in her voice. "In an inst.i.tution of this kind we are compelled to be businesslike. It is rare that we can afford to make an exception, though the temptation is often great.

The head and the heart--_voyez, vous, Monsieur_--they pull in contrary directions." And she slipped the book back into a pigeon-hole as if the touch of it was distasteful. She glanced perfunctorily at the cheque he handed to her, then closer, and the colour rose again to her sensitive face.

"But _Monsieur_ has written treble the amount," she murmured.

"Will you accept the balance," he said hurriedly, "in the name of my ward, for any purpose that you may think fit? There is one stipulation only--I do not wish her to know that there has been any monetary transaction between us." His voice was almost curt, and the Nun found herself unable to question a condition which, though manifestly generous, she deemed quixotic. She could only bend to his decision with mingled thankfulness and apprehension. Despite the problem of the girl's future she had it in her heart to wish that this singular claimant had never presented himself. His liberality was obvious but--. She locked the slip of paper away in the bureau with a feeling of vague uneasiness.

But for good or ill the matter was out of her hands. She had said all that she could say. The rest lay with G.o.d.

"I do accept it," she said, "with all grat.i.tude. It will enable us to carry out a scheme that has long been our hope. Your generosity will more than pave the way. I will send Gillian to you now."

She left him, more embarra.s.sed than he had been at first, more than ever dreading the task before him. He waited with a nervous impatience that irritated himself.

Turning to the window he looked out into the dusk. The old trees in the courtyard were almost indistinguishable. The rain dripped again steadily, splas.h.i.+ng the creeper that framed the cas.e.m.e.nt. A few lights showing dimly in the windows on the opposite side of the quadrangle served only to intensify the gloom. The time dragged. Fretfully he drummed with his fingers on the leaded panes, his ears alert for any sound beyond the closed door. The echo of a distant organ stole into the room and the soft solemn notes harmonised with the melancholy pattering of the raindrops and the gusts of wind that moaned fitfully around the house.

In a sudden revulsion of feeling the life he had mapped out for himself seemed horrible beyond thought. He could not bear it. It would be tying his hands and burdening himself with a responsibility that would curtail his freedom and hamper him beyond endurance. A great restlessness, a longing to escape from the irksome tie, came to him. Solitude and open s.p.a.ces; unpeopled nature; wild desert wastes--he craved for them.

The want was like a physical ache. The desert--he drew his breath in sharply--the hot s.h.i.+fting sand whispering under foot, the fierce noontide sun blazing out of a brilliant sky, the charm of it! The fascination of its false smiling surface, its treacherous beauty luring to hidden perils called to him imperatively. The curse of Ishmael that was his heritage was driving him as it had driven him many times before. He was in the grip of one of the revolts against restraint and civilisation that periodically attacked him. The wander-hunger was in his blood--for generations it had sent numberless ancestors into the lonely places of the world, and against it ties of home were powerless.

In early days to the romantic glamour of the newly discovered Americas, later to the silence of the frozen seas and to the mysterious depth of unexplored lands the Cravens had paid a heavy toll. A Craven had penetrated into the tangled gloom of the Amazon forests, and had never returned. In the previous century two Cravens had succ.u.mbed to the fascination of the North West Pa.s.sage, another had vanished in Central Asia. Barry's grandfather had perished in a dust storm in the Sahara.

And it was to the North African desert that his own thoughts turned most longingly. j.a.pan had satisfied him for a time--but only for a time. Western civilisation had there obtruded too glaringly, and he had admitted frankly to himself that it was not j.a.pan but O Hara San that kept him in Yokohama. The dark courtyard and the faintly lighted windows faded. He saw instead a tiny well-remembered oasis in Southern Algeria, heard the ceaseless chatter of Arabs, the shrill squeal of a stallion, the peevish grunt of a camel, and, rising above all other sounds, the whine of the tackling above the well. And the smell--the cloying smell that goes with camel caravans, it was pungent! He flung up his head inhaling deeply, then realised that the scent that filled the room was not the acrid smell of the desert but the penetrating odour of incense filtering in through the opened door. It shut and he turned reluctantly.

He saw at first only a pair of great brown eyes, staring almost defiantly, set in a small pale face, that looked paler by contrast with the frame of dark brown hair. Then his gaze travelled slowly over the slender black-clad figure silhouetted against the polished panels. His fear was substantiated. Not a child who could be relegated to nurses and governesses, but a girl in the dawn of womanhood. Pa.s.sionately he cursed John Locke.

He felt a fool, idiotically tongue-tied. He had been prepared to adopt a suitably paternal att.i.tude towards the small child he had expected. A paternal att.i.tude in connection with this self-possessed young woman was impossible, in fact ludicrous. For the moment he seemed unable to cope with the situation. It was the girl who spoke first. She came forward slowly, across the long narrow room.

"I am Gillian Locke, _Monsieur_."

CHAPTER IV

On the cus.h.i.+oned window seat in her bedroom at Craven Towers Gillian Locke sat with her arms wrapped round her knees waiting for the summons to dinner. With Miss Craven and her guardian she had left London that morning, arriving at the Towers in the afternoon, and she was tired and excited with the events of the day. She leant back against the panelled embrasure, her mind dwelling on the last three crowded months they had spent in Paris and London waiting until the house was redecorated and ready to receive them. It had been for her a wonderful experience. The novelty, the strangeness of it, left her breathless with the feeling that years, not weeks, had rushed by. Already in the realisation of the new life the convent days seemed long ago, the convent itself to have receded into a far off past. And yet there were times when she wondered whether she was dreaming, whether waking would be inevitable and she would find herself once more in the old dormitory to pray pa.s.sionately that she might dream again. And until tonight there had scarcely been time even to think, her days had been full, at night she had gone to bed to sleep in happy dreamlessness. The hotel bedrooms with their litter of trunks suggesting imminent flight had held no restfulness. To Gillian the transitory sensation had strained already over-excited nerves and heightened the dreamlike feeling that made everything seem unreal. But here, the visible evidences of travel removed, the deep silence of a large country house penetrating her mind and conducing to peace, she could think at last. The surroundings were helpful. There was about the room an air of permanence which the hotel bedrooms had never given, an atmosphere of abiding quiet that soothed her. She was sensitive of an influence that was wholly new to her and very sweet, that brought with it a feeling of laughter and tears strangely mingled, that made the room appear as no other room had ever done. It Was her room, and it had welcomed her. It was like a big friendly silent person offering mute reception, radiating repose. In a few hours the room had become intimate, dear to her. She laughed happily--then checked at a guilty feeling of treason against the grey old walls in Paris that had so long sheltered her. She was not ungrateful, all her life she would remember with grat.i.tude the love and care she had received. But the convent had been prison. Since her father had left her there, a tiny child, she had inwardly rebelled; the life was abhorrent to her, the restraint unbearable. With childish pride she had hidden her feelings, living through a period of acute misery with no hint to those about her of what she suffered. And the habit of suppression acquired in childhood had grown with her own development. As the years pa.s.sed the limitations of the convent became more perceptible. She felt its cramping influence to the full, as if the walls were closing in to suffocate her, to bury her alive before she had ever known a fuller freer life. She had longed for expansion--ideas she could not formulate, desires she could not express, crowded, jostled in her brain. She wanted a wider outlook on life than the narrow convent windows offered. Brief excursions into the world to the homes of her friends had filled her with a yearning for freedom and for independence, for a greater range of thought and action. Her artistic studies had served to foster an unrest she struggled against bravely and to conceal which she became daily more self-contained. Her reserve was like a barrier about her. She was sweet and gentle to all around her, but a little aloof and very silent. To the other girls she had been a heroine of romance, puzzling mystery surrounded her; to the Nuns an enigma. The Mother Superior, alone, had arrived at a partial understanding, more than that even she could not accomplish. Gillian loved her, but her reserve was stronger than her love. Sitting now in the dainty English bedroom, revelling in the warm beauty of the exquisite landscape that, mellowed in the evening light, lay spread out beneath her eyes, Gillian thought a little sadly of her parting with the Reverend Mother. She had tried to hide the happiness that the strange feeling of freedom gave her, to smother any look or word that might wound the gentle sensibility of the frail robed woman whose eyes were sad at the approaching separation. Her conscience smote her that her own heart held no sadness. She had said very little, nothing of the new life that lay ahead of her. She hid her hopes of the future as jealously as she had hidden her longings in the past, and she had left the convent as silently as she had lived in it. She had driven back to the hotel with a sense of relief predominating that it was all over, breathing deeply with a sigh of relaxed tension. It seemed to her then as if she had learned to breathe only within the last few days, as if the air itself was lighter, more exhilarating.

From the convent her mind went back to earlier days. She thought of her father, the handsome dissolute man, whose image had grown dim with years. As a tiny child she had loved him pa.s.sionately, the central figure of her chequered and wandering little life--father and mother in one, playmate and hero. Her recollection seemed to be of constant travelling; of long hours spent in railway trains; of arrivals at strange places in the dark night; of departures in the early dawn, half awake--but always happy so long as the familiar arms held her weary little body and there was the shabby old coat on which to pillow her brown curls. A jumbled remembrance of towns and country villages; of kind unknown women who looked compa.s.sionate and murmured over her in a dozen different languages. It had all been a medley of impressions and experiences--everything transient, nothing lasting, but the big untidy man who was her all. And then the convent. For a few years John Locke had reappeared at irregular intervals, and on the memory of those brief visits she had lived until he came again. Then he had ceased to come and his letters, grown short and few, full of vague promises--unsatisfying--meagre, had stopped abruptly. At first she had refused to admit to herself that he had forgotten, that she could mean so little to him, that he would deliberately put her out of his life.

She had waited, excusing, trusting, until, heart-sick with deferred hope, she had come to think of him as dead. She was old enough then to realise her position and in spite of the love and consideration surrounding her she had learned misery. Her popularity even was a source of torment, for in the happy homes of her friends she had felt more cruelly her own dest.i.tute loneliness.

When the lawyer's letter had come enclosing a few scrawled lines written by her dying father she had felt that life could hold no more bitterness. She had wors.h.i.+pped him--and he had abandoned her callously.

She was bone of his bone and he had made no effort even for his own flesh. He had thrown her a burden on the convent that sheltered her so willingly only for want of will power to conquer the weakness that had devitalised brain and body. The thought crushed her. As she read his confession, full of tardy remorse, her proud heart had been sick with humiliation. She groped blindly through a sea of despair, her faith broken, her trust gone. She hid her sorrow and her shame, fulfilling her usual tasks, following the ordinary routine--a little more silent, a little more reserved--her eyes alone betraying the storm that was overwhelming her. She had loved him so dearly--that was the sting.

She had guarded her memory of him so tenderly, weaving a thousand extravagant tales about him, pinnacling him above all men, her hero, her knight, her _preux chevalier._ And now she realised that her memory was no memory, that she had built up a fantastic figure of romance whose origin rested on nothing tangible, whose elevation had been so lofty that his overthrow was demolition. Her G.o.d had feet of clay. Her superman was nothing. All that she had ever had, memory that was delusion, was taken from her. Woken abruptly to the brutal truth she felt that she had nothing left to cling to--a loneliness far greater than she had known before. Then gradually her own honesty compelled her to admit her fantasy. The dream man she had evolved had been of her own making, the virtues with which she had endowed him bred of her own imagination. Of the real man she knew nothing, and for the real man there dawned slowly--though love for him had died--pity. It came to her, pa.s.sionately endeavouring to understand, that in the sheltered life she led she had no knowledge of the temptations that beset a man outside in the great world. Dimly she realised that some win out--and some go under. He had failed. And it seemed to her that on her had fallen his debt. She must take the place he had forfeited in the universe, she must succeed where he had failed. Her strength must rise out of his weakness.

His honour was hers to re-establish, given the opportunity. And the opportunity had been given. She had waited for the coming of her unknown guardian with a feeling of dull revolt against the degradation of being handed over inexorably to the disposal and charity of a stranger. Though she had not been told she had guessed, years ago, that money for her maintenance was wanting. The kindly deception of the Mother Superior had been ineffectual. Gillian knew she was a pauper. The charity of the convent school had been hard to bear. The charity of a stranger would be harder. She writhed with the humiliation of it. She was nineteen--for two years she must go and be and endure at the whim of an unknown. And what would he be like, this man into whose hands her father had thrust her! What choice would John Locke be capable of making--what love had he shown during these last years that he should choose carefully and well?

From among what cla.s.s of man, of the society into which he had sunk, would he select one to give his daughter? He had written of "my old friend, Barry Craven." The name conveyed nothing--the adjective admitted of two interpretations. Which? Day and night she was haunted with visions of old men--recollections of faces seen when driving with her friends or visiting their homes; old men who had interested her, old men from whom she had instinctively shrunk. What type of man was it that was coming for her? There were times when her courage deserted her and the constantly recurring question made her nearly mad with fear. She was like a wild creature caught in a trap, listening to the feet of the keeper nearing--nearing. She had longed for the time when she could leave the Convent, she clung to it now with dread at the thought of the future. The London lawyer had written that Mr. Craven was returning from j.a.pan to a.s.sume his guardians.h.i.+p, and she had traced his route with growing fear as the days slipped by--the keeper's tread coming closer and closer. She had masked the terror the thought of him inspired, preserving an outward apathy that seemed to imply complete indifference.

And in the end he had come sooner than she expected, for they thought he would go first to London. One morning she had learned he was in Paris, that very afternoon she would know her fate. The day had been interminable. During his interview with the Mother Superior she had paced the room where she was waiting as it seemed for hours, her nerves at breaking point. When the Reverend Mother came back she could have shrieked aloud and her desperate eyes failed to interpret the expression on the Nun's face; she tried to speak, a husky whisper that died away inarticulately. Faintly she heard the gentle words of encouragement and with an effort of pride she walked quickly to the door of the visitors'

room. There she paused, irresolute, and the low peaceful roll of the organ echoing from the distant chapel seemed to mock her. So often it had comforted, giving courage to go forward--today its very peacefulness jarred; nerve-racked she was out of tune with the atmosphere of calm tranquillity about her. She felt alien--that more than ever she stood alone. Then pride flamed afresh. With head held high and lips compressed she went in. As he turned from the window it was his great height and broad shoulders that struck her first--men of his physique were rare in France--and, in the thought of a moment, the well cut conventional morning coat had seemed absurd, and mentally she had clothed his long limbs in damascened steel. Then she had seen that he was young, how young she could not guess, but younger far than she had imagined. As their eyes met the sombre tragedy in his had hurt her. She divined a sorrow before which her own paled to nothingness and quick pity killed fear. The sadness of his face lifted her suddenly into full realisation of her womanhood. Compa.s.sion rose above self. Instinctively she knew that the interview that was to her so momentous was to him only an embarra.s.sing interlude. Shyness remained but the terror she had felt gave place to a feeling she had not then understood. As quickly as possible he had taken her to the hotel, leaving to his aunt all explanations that seemed necessary. And since then he had remained consistently in the background, delegating his authority to Miss Craven.

But from the first his proximity had troubled her--she was always conscious of his presence. Hypersensitive from her convent upbringing she knew intuitively when he entered a room or left it. Men were to her an unknown quant.i.ty; the few she had met--brothers and cousins of school friends--had been viewed from a different standpoint. Hedged about with rigid French convention there had been no chance of acquaintance ripening into friends.h.i.+p--she had been merely a schoolgirl among other girls, touching only the fringe of the most youthful of the masculine element in the houses where she had stayed. She had been unprepared for the change to the daily contact with a man like Barry Craven. It would take time to accustom herself, to become used to the continual masculine presence.

Miss Craven, to her nephew's relief, had taken the shy pale-faced girl to her eccentric heart with a suddenness and enthusiasm that had surprised herself.

And Gillian's reserve and pride had been unable to withstand the whirlwind little lady. Miss Craven's personality took a strong hold on her; she loved the woman, she admired the artist, and she was quick to recognise the real feeling and deep kindness that lay under brusque manner and quizzical speeches. She had good reason. She glanced now round the big room. Everywhere were evidences of lavish generosity, showered on her regardless of protest. Gillian's eyes filled slowly with tears. It was all a fairy story, too wonderful almost to be true.

Why were they so good to her--how would she ever be able to repay the kindness lavished on her? Her thoughts were interrupted by the latest gift that rose out of his basket with a sleepy yawn and stretching luxuriously came and laid his head on her knee, looking up at her with sad brown eyes. She had always loved animals, the possession of some dog had been an ardent desire, and she hugged the big black poodle now with a little sob.

"Mouston, you pampered person, have you ever been lonely? Can you imagine what it is like to be made to feel that you _belong_ to somebody again?" She rubbed her cheek against his satiny head, crooning over him, the dog thrilling to her touch with jerking limbs and sharp half-stifled whines. It was her first experience of owners.h.i.+p, of responsibility for a living creature that was dependent on her and for which she was answerable. And it was likely to prove an arduous responsibility. He was single-minded and jealous in his allegiance; Miss Craven he tolerated indifferently, of Craven he was openly suspicious. He followed Gillian like a shadow and moped in her absence, yielding to Yos.h.i.+o, who had charge of him on such occasions, a resigned obedience he gave to no other member of the household. Through Mouston Gillian and Yos.h.i.+o had become acquainted.

Mouston's affection this evening became over-enthusiastic and threatening to fragile silks and laces. Gillian kissed the top of his head, shook solemnly an insistent paw, and put him on one side. She moved to the dressing table and inspected herself critically in the big mirror. She looked with grave amus.e.m.e.nt. Was that Gillian Locke? She wondered did a b.u.t.terfly feel more incongruous when it shed its dull grub skin. For so many years she had worn the sombre garb of the convent schoolgirl, the change was still new enough to delight and the natural woman within her responded to the fascination of pretty clothing. The dark draperies of the convent had palled, she had craved colour with an almost starved longing.

The general reflection in the long gla.s.s satisfied, a more detailed personal survey raised serious doubts. She had never recognised the grace of her slender figure, the uncommon beauty of her pale oval face--other types had appealed more, other colouring attracted. She had studied her face often, disapprovingly. Once or twice, lacking a model, she had essayed to reproduce her own features. She had failed utterly.

The faithful portraiture she achieved for others was wanting. She was unable to express in her own likeness the almost startling exposition of character that distinguished her ordinary work. She had been her own limitation. Her failure had puzzled her, causing a searching mental inquiry. She had no knowledge herself of how her special gift took form, the work grew involuntarily under her hand. She was aware of no definite impression received, no attempt at soul a.n.a.lysis. Vaguely she supposed that in some subtle mysterious way the character of her sitter communicated itself, influencing her; in fact her best work had often had the least care bestowed upon it. Did her inability to transfer to canvas a living copy of her own face argue that she herself was without character--had she failed because there was in truth nothing to delineate? Or was it because she sought to see something unreal--sought to control a purely inherent impulse? It was a problem she had never solved.

She looked now at the mirrored figure with her usual disapproval, great brown eyes scowling back at her from the gla.s.s, then made a little obliterating movement with her hand and shook her head. Appearance had never mattered before, but now she wanted so much to please--to be a credit to the interest shown, to repay the time and money spent upon her. Her eyes grew wistful as she leant nearer to see if there were any tell-tale traces of tears, then danced with sudden amus.e.m.e.nt as she picked up a powder puff and dabbed tentatively.

"Oh, Gillian Locke, what would the Reverend Mother say!" she murmured, and laughed.

The poodle, jealous for attention, leaped on to a chair beside her, his paws on the plate gla.s.s slab scattering brushes and bottles, and still laughing she smothered his damp eager nose with powder until he sneezed disgusted protest.

With a conciliatory caress she left him to disarrange the dressing table further, and went back to the window. Beneath her lawns extended to a wide terrace, stone bal.u.s.traded, from the centre of which a long flight of steps led down to a formal rose garden sheltered by a high yew hedge and backed by a little copse beyond which the heavily timbered park stretched indefinitely in the evening light. The sense of s.p.a.ce fascinated her. She had always longed for unimpeded views, for the stillness of the country. On the smooth shaven lawns great trees were set like sentinels about the house; fancifully she thought of them as living vigilant keepers maintaining for centuries a perpetual guard--and smiled at her childish imagination. Her pleasure in the prospect deepened. Already the charm of the Towers had taken hold of her, from the first moment she had loved it. Throughout the long railway journey and during the five mile drive from the station, she had antic.i.p.ated, and the actuality had outstripped her antic.i.p.ation. The beauty of the park, the herds of grazing deer, had delighted her; the old grey house itself had stayed her spellbound. She had not imagined anything half so lovely, so impressively enduring. She had seen nothing to compare with its fine proportions, with the luxury of its setting. It differed utterly from the French Chateaux where she had visited; there toil obtruded, vineyards and rich fields of crops cl.u.s.tered close to the very walls of the seigneur's dwellings, a source of wealth simply displayed; here similar activities were banished to unseen regions, and scrupulously kept avenues, close cut lawns and immaculate flower-beds formed evidence of constant labour whose results charmed the eye but were materially profitless. The formal grandeur appealed to her. She was not altogether alien, she reflected, with a curious smile--despite his subsequent downfall John Locke had sprung from just such stock as the owner of this wonderful house. A sudden panic of lateness interrupted her pleasure and she turned from the window, calling to the dog.

Her suite opened on to a circular gallery--from which bedrooms opened--running round the central portion of the house and overlooking the big square hall which was lit from above by a lofty glazed dome; eastward and westward stretched long rambling wings, a story higher than the main block, crowned with the turrets that gave the house its name.

A low murmur of men's voices came from below, and leaning over the bal.u.s.trade she saw Craven and his agent standing talking before the empty fireplace. Sudden shyness overcame her; her guardian was still formidable, Peters she had seen for the first time only a few hours ago when he had met them at the station--a short broad-shouldered man inclining to stoutness, with thick grey hair and close-pointed beard. To go down deliberately to them seemed impossible. But while she hesitated in an agony of self-consciousness Mouston precipitated the inevitable by das.h.i.+ng on ahead down, the stairs and plunging into the bearskin hearthrug, ploughing the thick fur with his muzzle and sneezing wildly.

The sense of responsibility outweighed shyness and she hurried after him, but Peters antic.i.p.ated her and already had the dog's unwilling head firmly between his hands.

"What on earth has he got on his nose, Miss Locke?" he asked, in a tone of wonder, but the keen blue eyes looking at her from under bushy grey eyebrows were twinkling and her shyness was not proof against his friendliness.