The Dazzling Miss Davison E-Book

Florence Warden

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

A roomy, comfortable, old-fashioned house in Bayswater, with high windows, big rooms, and little balconies just big enough to hold a wealth of flowers in summer and a very pretty show of evergreens when the season for flowers was past.
On October a row of asters, backed up by a taller row of foliage plants, made the house look bright and pretty, and the young faces that appeared at the windows of the drawing-room made it prettier still.

Leseprobe

THE DAZZLING MISS DAVISON

THE DAZZLING MISS DAVISON

BYFLORENCE WARDEN AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE ON THE MARSH”

First Edition, 1910 © 2021 Librorium Editions ISBN : 9782383830108

THE DAZZLING MISS DAVISON

CHAPTER I

A roomy, comfortable, old-fashioned house in Bayswater, with high windows, big rooms, and little balconies just big enough to hold a wealth of flowers in summer and a very pretty show of evergreens when the season for flowers was past.

On October a row of asters, backed up by a taller row of foliage plants, made the house look bright and pretty, and the young faces that appeared at the windows of the drawing-room made it prettier still.

Mr. and Mrs. Aldington, the occupiers of the house, thought that there was nothing pleasanter in life than the gayety of young people, and so, as they had only two children, a son and a daughter, both grown up, they gave a general invitation to the younger generation, of which, particularly on a Sunday afternoon and evening, the contemporaries of their son and daughter were not slow to avail themselves.

Especially was it the pleasure of these good-hearted people to extend hospitality to those young folks whose lives were, for one reason or another, not so bright as those of their own children. And many a friendless young barrister waiting for a brief, young doctor struggling for a practice, and many a girl whose parents had a hard time of it in keeping up a fair position on an unfairly small income, found recreation and a warm welcome at the old-fashioned house in Bayswater.

Some of them found more than that. Gerard Buckland, for instance, a clever young barrister who was tired of hearing of the great things he was to do some day, since he was unable to get even small things to do to go on with, found at the Aldingtons something that he had stoutly resolved to do without until he had “got on.”

He found, in other words, his “ideal.”

It was on a bright Sunday afternoon, when the big drawing-room was full of lively people, mostly young, and all talking at once, that Gerard, having been introduced by Arthur Aldington two Sundays previously, took advantage for the third time of the general invitation given him by the host and hostess, and found himself surrounded by a dozen people among whom he knew no one except the Aldingtons themselves.

Whereupon Rose, the daughter of the house, made him sit by her, and, as he was shyly looking over a basketful of loose photographs which he had found on a table beside him, undertook the task of showman, and told him all about the pictures as he looked at them one by one.

It chanced that the second picture he picked up after Rose’s arrival was the portrait of a girl which attracted him at once.

“What an interesting face!” said he, as he looked at the photograph.

“And she’s an interesting girl too!” said Rose, who was a plain, amiable young woman of six-and-twenty, whom everybody liked and nobody had as yet chosen. “She’s the daughter of a Colonel, who speculated, and then died and left his wife and two girls with scarcely anything to live upon. Papa says it’s one of the saddest stories he knows. They’ve gone to live in a cottage somewhere, after living in one of the most beautiful houses you ever saw in the country, and having a flat in town as well.”

Gerard Buckland was looking intently at the photograph, which was that of a quite young woman with an oval face, delicate features, and an expression which combined vivacity with intelligence.

“She looks very clever,” he said.

“Yes, so she is—and very pretty too.”

“Yes, very, very pretty.”

He was fascinated; and when he was compelled to look at other photographs, he placed that of the girl whose story he had just heard at the side of the basket, in such a position that he could glance at it again from time to time, and amuse himself by speculating about this girl who was so handsome, so clever, and so unlucky.

Rose Aldington noticed his preoccupation with the picture, and said, with a smile—

“I see you admire her, just as everyone else does.”

“I was thinking the story a sad one,” said Gerard, rather confused at being discovered in his act of adoration.

“Oh, well, perhaps she’ll marry well, and her sister too, and then it will be all right. The sister is even better-looking than Ra—than she is, and just as nice. Only unluckily she hadn’t finished growing up when their father died, so she hasn’t had the benefit of such a good education as the elder.”

“It’s hard upon a girl, though, when she has to marry just for money,” observed Gerard.

“Oh, yes, of course. And I’m not sure that this particular girl would do it either. But that’s the usual thing to say, isn’t it, when a very pretty girl is left unexpectedly poor?”

“Yes.”

Gerard answered quite shortly, and looked at the photograph again. And at that moment the door opened, and an exclamation rose to his lips as he recognized in the new arrival the very girl whose picture he held in his hand.

He felt the blood rush to his face as he looked at her. He saw at once that the absence of color from the photograph had given him an altogether wrong impression of what the girl herself would be like. She was of medium height, slender, pale, brown-haired, brown-eyed, and her dress was plain almost to dowdiness.

But she carried herself so well, her figure was so graceful, her expression so intelligent, and her smile so charming, that she attracted instinctive attention in greater measure than any of the other girls in the room.

“Rachel!” cried Mrs. Aldington.

“Miss Davison!” cried her son Arthur at the same moment.

And the new-comer was brought into the group near the fire and surrounded, while Gerard Buckland, at a little distance, listened to the tones of her voice, and approved of them as he had done of every detail concerning her.

Only one thing about her seemed amiss. Well as she wore her plain, almost shabby clothes, neat and graceful as she looked in them, Gerard felt that they were not the clothes which she ought to be wearing, that her beauty demanded a better setting than the plain serge skirt, the black jacket, the gray felt mushroom hat with its trimming of a quill and a big black rosette, which, though they became her, were not quite smart enough either for the occasion or for her own type of womanhood.

Gerard saw the glance of Rose Aldington wander in his direction with a sly look, and he hoped she would not forget to find an opportunity to introduce him to the interesting guest.

He was not disappointed. Before tea was brought in, Rose had contrived the introduction, and Gerard found himself in conversation with the girl whom he felt to be the nearest he had yet met to the sort of floating ideal of what is most gracious in woman, which he, in common with most young men, carried about in his mind, ready to crystallize into the face and form of some human, breathing, living girl.

As she interested him, so did he, perhaps, interest her. The tall, shy, handsome fair man of five-and-twenty, who spoke so softly, but who looked as if his voice could be heard in other and stronger tones upon occasion, and of whom it had been whispered in her ear by Rose that he was “so clever, bound to make a name for himself at the bar,” was pleasant to look upon and to listen to, and the two young people, in that pleasant twilight which Mrs. Aldington loved, and which she would not too soon have broken in upon by gas and candles, soon began to find that they had many things to say to each other, as they sipped tea and nibbled cake, to the accompaniment of the other gay young voices, in the illumination of the leaping firelight.

Somebody had drawn the talk of the whole room into the old channel of woman’s rights and position, and immediately the whole company had broken up into interested little couples and groups to discuss it with the same freshness of interest as if it had never been discussed before.

Rachel Davison was rather bitter about it.

“It’s all very well to talk,” she said, “about the right of woman to act for herself, and to make a position for herself, and the rest of it. But you want more than the right: you must have the power. And that is what we shall never get,” she added, with a sigh.

Gerard argued with her.

“Why shouldn’t they have the power?” he said. “When once the barriers of prejudice are pulled down, what’s to prevent a woman from entering any field where she feels her talents will be best employed?”

She raised her eyebrows.

“When once the barriers of prejudice are broken down!” echoed she. “But that will be never. You don’t recognize how strong they are! Why, look at my mother, for instance; she’s more particular about little things, prejudices and that sort of thing, than about important ones. And she’s not alone, she’s one of a type, the most common type. She would rather see her daughters dead, I’m quite sure, than engaged in any occupation which she’s been accustomed to think unwomanly.”

“But she belongs to the last generation. We go on enlarging our ideas. You, for instance, don’t agree with her, I can see.”

“Not in everything, certainly; though I agree with her enough to sympathize with her, and to wish that the world were just as she sees it, with plenty of work for all, and work of the pleasantest kind—work that one could engage in without loss of dignity, and with credit to oneself.”

“There’s plenty of such work to be found now. What about the dignity of labor?”

“All very well in theory, but quite a mistake in practice. At any rate, there’s nothing dignified about any calling which I, for example, could find to follow. Now poor mamma thinks it’s all right, that one has only to look about to find ways of utilizing what she calls one’s talents, and to make heaps of money by them.”

“Perhaps she’s right after all. I’m sure you wouldn’t be long in finding an opening for yours, if you wanted one.”

“What makes you say that? At least I know. Of course, it’s the sort of thing a man must say to a woman. But, as a matter of stern fact, I haven’t any talents, and for a woman without to look for remunerative and dignified labor is just the most appalling waste of time imaginable.”

“I’m quite sure you have talents, only perhaps you don’t recognize them yourself yet.”

“What makes you speak so certainly, when I tell you I have not?”

Gerard hesitated.

“I’m not quite sure whether I dare tell why. The thing I should have to say, if I were to tell the truth, is the sort of thing some ladies as young as you don’t care to hear.”

He looked at her with shy interest, and she, alert and inquisitive, insisted upon his explaining.

“Whether I like to hear it or not, I must know what you mean,” she said, with charming imperiousness.

“Well, then, Miss Davison, you look—may I say it?—‘brainy.’”

She nodded, smiling.

“I’ve been told that before, but the look is deceptive. I’m only just not quite an idiot. I can’t do anything—except one thing that I don’t think I’ll own to,” she added, with a laugh.

“Let me put you through a short catechism. Can’t you play?—the piano, I mean.”

“Not even well enough to get through the accompaniment of a song at sight, or to play an easy piece that I haven’t diligently practiced till the family is tired to death of it.”

“Can’t you paint?”

“Oh, yes, I can copy drawing-master’s pictures, which are like nothing in heaven or earth or the water under the earth.”

“You can sing, I feel sure.”

“Yes, I can, but you have to sit very near the piano to hear me.”

“Then you have some other accomplishments which you have concealed from me,” said Gerard, affecting a judicial frown.

Miss Davison laughed merrily.

“Well, I have one, but wild horses shan’t drag from me what it is. And, if you knew, you would not advise me to use it.”

“Come, come, I must have complete confession. No half-way measures. Let me see if I can’t suggest a way of utilizing this mysterious accomplishment.”

She laughed, blushed crimson, and suddenly opening her hand, showed him, lying flat on the palm, a little silver pencil-case, at sight of which he uttered an exclamation.

“Why, that’s mine, isn’t it?” said he. “How did you—”

He stopped, she laughed, and Rose Aldington, who was sitting near, joined in her mirth, which was of rather a shame-faced kind.

“Showing off again, Rachel?” she said.

Miss Davison laughed, gave the pencil-case back to Gerard, and said, with a demure look—

“There! that’s my best accomplishment. I flatter myself I can pick pockets with any amateur living. Now you wouldn’t recommend me to take to that as a livelihood, would you?”

He was amused, almost dismayed, but protested earnestly that there must be a hundred ways in which such exceeding dexterity could be profitably exercised without having recourse to the profession she suggested.

But, in the meantime, Rose Aldington having drawn the attention of the rest of the people in the room to Rachel’s accomplishment, she was called upon to give another exhibition of her skill, and this she did in various ways, transferring trifles from the mantelpiece to the table and back again so quickly and cleverly that the eye could not follow her movements, and performing other little feats requiring extreme delicacy of touch and quickness of eye, until they all told her she would make her fortune if she were to set up as a conjurer.

Gerard, however, was more deeply interested than the rest. He learned from her that she performed these various tricks without ever having been taught conjuring, and he argued from this that, if she were only to train her special faculties in some given direction, she could not fail to become exceedingly expert.

“I should have thought,” he said, “that you would make a very clever milliner, with your wonderfully light touch.”

Miss Davison sighed.

“I believe I should,” she said; “but my mother won’t hear of it. Prejudice again! And I daresay that the talent which seems extraordinary when it is untrained, would turn out quite commonplace if I were to be pitted, at any calling such as millinery, against those who have for years been brought up to it.”

“I don’t think so,” said Gerard. “Indeed, I’m sure you do yourself an injustice. Your lightness of hand and quickness of eye are quite remarkable. And the wonderful way in which you move, so that you get from one place to another without being seen on the way, if I may so express it, reminds one rather of a bird than of the average solid, stolid thing we call a human being.”

Miss Davison was amused, rather pleased, by his evident enthusiasm, and when he modestly and stammeringly expressed a hope that she would let him know if she decided to make any practical use of her talents, she told him that when she and her mother came to town, she would ask him to go and see them.

“At present,” she added, “we are living quite in the country, and we can’t receive any visitors because my mother is not well enough.”

“And how shall I know—through the Aldingtons—when you come to town?” asked Gerard eagerly.

“Oh, yes; they will know before anyone. Mrs. Aldington is such a dear, and so is her husband; and so, for that matter, are Arthur and Rose. Yes, whenever we come up, and wherever we settle, they will know our address at once.”

When Miss Davison rose to go, Gerard Buckland was not long in following her. He came up with her before she reached the corner of the street, and begged to be allowed to see her to the station.

But she refused, saying quite gently that she must get used to going about alone, and that it was the first step towards women’s rights.

He looked pained.

“I should have been so very grateful to you if you had let me call upon you!” he said humbly, wistfully.

Her face grew grave.

“No,” she said; “I can’t do that. The plain truth is that my mother has not yet got over a terrible change in circumstances which we’ve suffered not long ago, and she can’t bear that anyone should see us in what is practically a workman’s cottage. Prejudice again, of course, but it has to be considered.”

“May I hope for the pleasure of meeting you again at the Aldingtons?”

“Oh, yes, I’m often there. I shall be very pleased to see you again when I go there.”

She gave him her hand and he was obliged to bid her good-bye and leave her.

But the impression she had made upon him was so strong, deepened, no doubt, by the circumstances in which she was placed, and also, perhaps, by her resolute attitude which was neither coquetry nor prudery, but simply pride, that he could scarcely think of anything for the next few days but the pale oval face and the big brown eyes, alternately gay and grave, and the soft voice that was different from the voices of other girls.

He went to the Aldingtons assiduously after that, always hoping to meet Miss Davison again. But each time he was disappointed, and at last he grew ashamed of calling so often, and of being so dull when he was there, and absented himself for a couple of months from the old-fashioned Bayswater house and its gay circle.

Then he called again, but only to hear that nothing had been seen or heard of the Davisons for some time. At last, six months after his meeting with Rachel, and while the remembrance of her face, her voice, and her quietly outspoken opinions was still fresh upon him, Gerard met Arthur Aldington one day in the Strand and was at once reproached for neglecting them.

Gerard made excuses, and asked after Miss Davison.

Arthur’s face changed.

“I don’t know what’s happened to them,” said he, with a perplexed look. “I haven’t seen anything of any of them till a day or two ago. And then”.... He checked himself, and said, “You were quite gone on Rachel, weren’t you?”

“I admired her immensely,” said Gerard. “I wanted to see her again, but she wouldn’t let me call; said her mother didn’t like receiving people in a cottage, after the sort of life she’d been used to.”

Arthur smiled.

“Oh, that was all rot,” said he simply. “Mrs. Davison is the most fluffy, gentle old lady in the world. It was Rachel who was ashamed of their simple way of living, always Rachel. She twists her mother and sister round her little finger, and she could have had the entire population of London to call if she’d chosen.”

Gerard looked hurt.

“She’s an odd girl,” went on Arthur. “The other day I met her for the first time for months at the Stores. I went there to get some things for mother, and I ran against Rachel. She was beautifully dressed, looked awfully smart, and seemed quite confused at meeting me. She didn’t answer when I asked her where she was living, but said her mother was at Brighton and her sister at school in Richmond. And I asked her why she hadn’t been to see us, and she said she had meant to come, but had been busy. And she promised to come last Sunday, but she didn’t.”

“Is she living in town?”

“I don’t know; but she’s doing well, anyhow. She looked remarkably prosperous. She puzzled me altogether.”

Gerard, whose interest in Rachel Davison had been revived and strengthened by this meeting, and these details concerning the girl who had roused his keen admiration, called next Sunday at the Aldingtons, but only to be disappointed and still further puzzled by the accounts he received of Rachel Davison.

For Rose had met her, shopping at Marshall and Snelgrove’s, and Rachel, who was exquisitely dressed and accompanied by a well-dressed but undistinguished-looking man had cut her dead.

“She’s married, I suppose, and to some sweep whom she doesn’t want to introduce to us,” suggested Arthur.

And Gerard’s spirits ran down to zero at the thought.

CHAPTER II

It was two months later than this meeting, and nearly eight months after his first meeting with Rachel Davison, when Gerard Buckland, as he was “doing” the Academy with a listless air on a hot afternoon in June, came suddenly upon a sight which at once changed his listlessness into excitement of the most violent kind.

In front of him, with half a dozen Provincial and suburban loungers in between, were two girls, both beautifully dressed, of whom Gerard at once recognized the elder to be Rachel Davison.

The transformation, however, from the plainly dressed and dowdy girl he had met a few months ago at the Aldingtons, to the woman in a trained dress of écru lace, with a big brown hat trimmed with long ostrich plumes shading from palest pink to deepest crimson, was so amazing, so complete, that he for a moment doubted whether he had made a mistake.

For the change was not in dress only. The beauty of the brilliant Rachel was of that type which is greatly enhanced by handsome dress, and she appeared ten times more beautiful now than she had done in the shabby clothes of the year before.

The other girl Gerard guessed to be her sister, and a more charming contrast it would have been impossible to find than that of the pale dark beauty and the pink-and-white fair one beside her.

The younger girl was dressed in an ankle-length skirt of black lace, a blouse to match with elbow sleeves, and long black kid gloves to meet them. Her large mushroom hat was black also, and the only relief to the somber hue besides her golden hair and brilliant blonde coloring, consisted in a bunch of sweet peas which was tucked into her dress.

The good looks and smart appearance of the two girls attracted the attention of the crowd in the rooms to such a degree that wherever they went the people followed them, and Gerard had difficulty in forcing his way through the admiring mob to Rachel’s side.

The sight of her had confused his thoughts, made his heart beat fast, and revived, with extra vividness, the intense interest he had from the first felt in the girl.

With some diffidence he greeted her, and was relieved to find that she did not “cut” him, but holding out her hand with a smile, while a little tinge of pink color appeared in her cheeks, greeted him by name, thus showing that she had not, as he had feared, quite forgotten him.

“I’ve been most anxious for the pleasure of meeting you again, and I’ve asked the Aldingtons about you, but you haven’t been to see them lately, they said,” he stammered, although he felt as he spoke that it was rather a stupid thing to say.

She blushed a little more.

“I really haven’t much time for visiting now,” she said. “Let me introduce you to my sister Lilian, Mr. Buckland. She’s at school at Richmond, but I’ve brought her out for a day’s holiday.”

“You are living in town now?” he asked.

“Yes, I am staying with some friends. My mother is living down at Brighton, and I divide my time between them,” said Miss Davison.

Gerard hesitated. He wanted more than ever to know all about her, to be able to meet her at her home, to renew the acquaintance which had delighted and impressed him so much. But her words seemed to imply quite clearly that she had no such wish on her side.

“I—I had heard—the Aldingtons thought”—he stammered at last—“that you were married.”

She smiled.

“I’m not a marrying girl,” she said.

There was a pause and then he grew bold.

“You’ve taken my advice and found an opening for your talents,” said he.

Miss Davison looked alarmed.

“What do you mean?” she said quickly.

It was an awkward question to answer. He could not tell her that whereas she had been shabby and ashamed of being seen in her mother’s modest home a few months ago, now she was resplendent in expensive clothes, and evidently as far removed as possible from the pinch of poverty.

“I mean,” he said diplomatically, “that from what I saw of you I am sure you would not have failed to find some opening for your energies, and” he dared to add, with a sly glance of admiration, “to judge by what I see, you have succeeded.”

The blush faded from Miss Davison’s face and gave place to a demure and flickering smile.

“We have had a little luck at last,” she said. “That’s all. It’s nothing to do with me.”

At that moment an elderly lady of distinguished appearance, who appeared to be acting as chaperon to the two girls, came up to them from the seat in the middle of the room, where she had been doing her inspection of the pictures—and the people—without fatigue. Miss Davison had to turn to talk to her, but she did not introduce him. So he fell back upon the younger sister, who was full of excitement and happiness over her holiday.

“Don’t you find looking at pictures tiring?” asked he, for want of something better to say.

“Oh, no. You see this is a great treat for me, to come out with Rachel; so nothing bores me, as it might anyone who could do this sort of thing whenever he liked.”

“You are very fond of your sister, I can see.”

The girl’s face beamed with affection as she answered—

“I adore Rachel. She’s so wonderfully clever and energetic, and good to us. Do you know that she has changed everything for mamma and me, by her cleverness and her hard work?”

“I’m not at all surprised,” said Gerard heartily. “I told her when I met her first that I was sure she would find some opening for her talents. She said she had none, but I knew better.”

“No talents! Yes, isn’t it absurd? That’s what she always says,” cried Lilian merrily. “A girl who can make eight hundred a year, without any previous teaching or training, simply by drawing designs.”

“Indeed!” said Gerard, admiring but almost incredulous at the simplicity of the means.

“Yes,” pursued Lilian confidently. “Of course she has to work very hard, and she has to go about just where the firm that employs her wants her to go. But she says she likes it, and certainly they treat her very well.”

Gerard was puzzled. That any firm should pay a designer eight hundred a year, and want her to travel about for them seemed strange, he thought. He had had a vague idea that a designer must go through a thorough course of training before his talents were of much practical value; and to learn that a girl who had had no experience of such work could, within a few months, make such a large income was a surprise to him.

“She must have to work very hard,” he said.

“Yes, but she finds time to go about and enjoy herself too. That is the wonderful part of it, and nobody could do it but Rachel,” babbled on the pretty childlike seventeen-year-old sister proudly. “Old Lady Jennings, whom she stays with, says she never sees her with a pencil in her hand when she’s at home. But she has a little studio somewhere off Regent Street—only she won’t tell us where, for fear we should go and disturb her at her work,” added the girl ingenuously, “and when she has anything important to do, she just shuts herself up there, and works away for hours. I do wish I were clever like that!” she added wistfully.

“I’ve no doubt you’re clever too, in some other way,” almost stammered Gerard, puzzled and confused by the strange account the simple-hearted schoolgirl had given him.

He was conscious, even as he talked to the pretty child, that her sister was watching them with anxiety. Was Rachel anxious that Lilian should not be so frank?

Old Lady Jennings, the distinguished-looking chaperon, seemed to be anxious to have him introduced to her. But Rachel prevented this, and contrived, without any appearance of incivility, to dismiss Gerard within a few moments of the conversation he had had with her sister.

He was disturbed, ruffled, rendered uneasy, and vaguely suspicious of he knew not what. But the impression made upon him by Miss Davison the elder, was stronger than ever, and he felt that he could not rest until he had found out more about her, and fathomed the mystery which appeared to surround her.

The more he thought about it, the more certain he felt that the younger sister must be under a misapprehension with regard to the income earned by her sister. Either it was much smaller than she supposed, and Rachel pretended that it was large, in order that the younger might not feel that she was a burden, or else Rachel had some other employment, more remunerative, to eke out her income.

Was she on the stage? Though Gerard knew little about the theatrical profession except from the outside, he was vaguely sure that incomes of eight hundred a year cannot be made there except by actors and actresses who have some training or experience, or who have made such a mark for some special reason or other, that their names must be known to everybody.

That the girl in whom he felt such a strong interest would not stoop to anything unworthy he felt sure. But that he remembered, with an uneasiness which he could not stay, that singular treatment of her friends the Aldingtons, for whom she had professed so much affection, and yet whom she did not scruple to neglect and even to “cut,” without any apparent reason.

And why would she not let him be introduced to old Lady Jennings, when the lady herself had evidently been willing, if not anxious, to know him? Why did such a young woman choose to wrap her doings and her whereabouts in a ridiculous mystery, which could not but be prejudicial both to herself and her young sister?

The whole thing was puzzling, irritating, and Gerard could think of nothing else.

He would have liked to think of Rachel Davison as he had seen her first, and to honor her for her valiant efforts to restore to her mother and sister the luxurious atmosphere of their old home, all by her own hard work.

Now, try as he would to dispel all doubts from his mind, he could not but feel that there was a mystery about her which was disquieting. It was true that this Lady Jennings, with whom she was staying, was a woman with a high and even conspicuous position in the world. Not very rich, she was a great connoisseur and a much sought after hostess, and no girls on the threshold of life could have a better, a shrewder, or a more trustworthy friend.

But, on the other hand, Rachel had not been candid or truthful in her statements to him: was it possible that she was equally lacking in candor to others?

She had told him that her prosperity was due to “luck,” and had expressly stated that it had “nothing to do with her.”

Now her sister had said frankly that this “luck” was due to her sister’s talents and hard work.

What did this discrepancy mean?

Gerard worried himself unceasingly about this, for he could not get the brilliant and beautiful Miss Davison out of his head. Lilian had said that her sister had a little studio somewhere near Regent Street, where she occupied herself with these wonderful designs which brought her in so handsome an income.

Mrs. Davison, she had said, lived at Brighton, and Rachel divided her time between her mother and Lady Jennings, whose address Gerard immediately set himself to discover.

It was near Sloane Street, a small house, the position of which suggested a rental quite out of proportion to its small size.

Gerard took a walk in that direction, and looked wistfully at the door at which he dared not knock. He felt himself to be growing even dangerously sentimental about this girl, and told himself he was a fool to think of a woman who certainly harbored no thought of him.

And yet—there was the rub!—it had seemed to him, that afternoon at the Academy, that Rachel looked at him with a certain expression which suggested that, so far from having forgotten him, she retained almost as vivid a remembrance of him as he did of her. This was not a fancy, it was a fact, and it completed his subjugation to the tyranny of his ideal.

He began to haunt the West End, hovering between Sloane Street and Regent Street until one evening, when there was a grand dinner-party given, and a great crowd was assembled in one of the Squares in the expectation of the arrival of royalty, he recognized, with a pang of surprise and terror which almost made him cry out aloud, the face and figure of Rachel Davison not far away from him.

She was dressed in a shabby skirt and blouse, and an old, shapeless black hat, but the disguise was ineffectual for him; he knew her at once, and was about to approach her, and to address her, when suddenly he saw her withdraw to the outskirts of the crowd, followed by a thickset man rather above the middle height. Gerard, hiding himself with a strange sickness at his heart, among the crowd, nevertheless kept watch.

And he saw her hand something bright and glistening to the man, and then disappear absolutely from sight.

Gerard staggered out of the crowd, faint as if he had received a physical wound.

Was Rachel a thief?

CHAPTER III

The incident happened so quickly, the appearance and disappearance from Gerard’s sight of the disguised Rachel had been so sudden, so rapid, so quiet, that it seemed as if the whole affair had been a vision, a dream, anything but solid reality.

Was he mistaken about the identity of the girl?

Gerard began to think he must be. After all, it was night-time, there was a great crowd of people about him, pushing and struggling, and it was easy enough, in such circumstances, to mistake an accidental likeness for a strong one.

At least, this was what he told himself, desperately anxious not to be forced to come to the conclusion that the girl he had just seen acting in such a strange, and such a suspicious manner, was the beautiful Rachel Davison who had made so great an impression upon him, whom he could not forget.

Although, however, he was unable to accept his own argument that he might have been mistaken as to the identity of the woman, it was still open to him to invent reasons why he might have been mistaken as to what she was doing. He had believed he saw her hand to a man a glittering ornament which looked like diamonds. And the impression had brought vividly and painfully to his mind the remembrance of the first occasion of his meeting Rachel, and of her display of nimbleness with her fingers.

There came back to his mind with unpleasant iteration the words she had uttered about her accomplishment being good for nothing; unless she meant to pick pockets.

Of course she had uttered them lightly, and of course he had taken them as a jest. Of course he knew too that the idea of connecting the brilliant Miss Davison with the pursuits of a pickpocket was absurd, revolting, horrible.

He did not even, so he told himself, think the matter worth a second thought. But he went on thinking of nothing else, and hurried away to his rooms in Buckingham Street, oppressed by a sensation of discomfort and depression, such as he could not remember having ever experienced before.

He stopped short suddenly as he was walking quickly along and tried to remember what the man was like to whom he had seen her hand the glittering object.

But the whole episode had passed so swiftly, his own attention had been so completely absorbed in the girl herself and in what she was doing, that he had had no time or attention left for the man. He remembered vaguely that the man’s back was turned to him, that he was tall and broad-shouldered and that he wore a dark overcoat, but he could recall no more details, try as he would.

The man, too, appeared to have been an expert at rapid disappearance, for when Gerard had turned to look for him he was gone.