The Buccaneers

all the other places are foreign. And he hates anything foreign. There are lots of things he’s never done that he feels quite sure he’d hate.”

Guy was silent. Again he seemed to himself to be eaves-dropping — unintentionally leading her on to say more than she meant; and the idea troubled him.

He turned back to his study of the pictures. “Has it ever occurred to you,” he began again after a pause, “that to enjoy them in their real beauty—”

“I ought to persuade Ushant to send them back where they belong?”

“I didn’t mean anything so drastic. But did it never occur to you that if you had the courage to sweep away all those... those touching little — er... family mementoes—” His gesture ranged across the closely covered walls, from illuminated views of Vesuvius in action to landscapes by the Dowager Duchess’s great-aunts, funereal monuments worked in hair on faded silk, and photographs in heavy oak frames of ducal relatives, famous race-horses, Bishops in lawn sleeves, and undergraduates grouped about sporting trophies.

Annabel coloured, but with amusement, not annoyance. “Yes; it did occur to me; and one day I smuggled in a ladder and took them all down — every one.”

“By jove, you did? It must have been glorious.”

“Yes; that was the trouble. The Duchess—”

She broke off, and he interposed, with an ironic lift to the brows: “But you’re the Duchess.”

“Not the real one. You must have seen that already. I don’t know my part yet, and I don’t believe I ever shall. And my mother-in-law was so shocked that every single picture I’d taken down had to be put back the same day.”

“Ah. that’s natural too. We’re built like that in this tight little island. We fight like tigers against change, and then one fine day accept it without arguing. You’ll see: Ushant will come round, and then his mother will, because he has. It’s only a question of time — and luckily you’ve plenty of that ahead of you.” He looked at her as he spoke, conscious that he was not keeping the admiration out of his eyes, or the pity either, as he had meant to.

Her own eyes darkened, and she glanced away. “Yes; there’s plenty of time. Years and years of it.” Her voice dragged on the word, as if in imagination she were struggling through the long desert reaches of her own future.

“You don’t complain of that, do you?”

“I don’t know; I can’t tell. I’m not as sure as Ushant how I shall feel about things I’ve never tried. But I’ve tried this — and I sometimes think I wasn’t meant for it...” She broke off, and he saw the tears in her eyes.

“My dear child—” he began; and then, half-embarrassed: “For you are a child still, you know. Have you any idea how awfully young you are?”

As soon as he had spoken he reflected that she was too young not to resent any allusion to her inexperience. She laughed. “Plea

“Oh, yes, do tell us,” exclaimed Lady Brightlingsea, coming to anchor between the two. “It’s called the Virginia reel, isn’t it? I thought it was named after my daughter-in-law — Seadown’s wife is called Virginia, you know. But she says no: she used to dance it as a child. It’s an odd coincidence, isn’t it?”

The Dowager was always irritated by Lady Brightling- sea’s vagueness.

Sir Helsmley imparted this information in a loud, almost challenging voice, as he always did when he had to communicate anything unexpected or difficult to account for. Explaining was a nuisance, and somewhat of a derogation. He resented anything that made it necessary, and always spoke as if his interlocutor ought to have known beforehand the answer to the questions he was putting.

After his bad fall in the hunting-field, the year before Guy’s return from Brazil, the county had confidently expected that the lonely widower would make an end by marrying either his hospital nurse or the Gaiety girl who had brightened his solitude during his son’s absence. One or the other of these conclusions to a career over-populated by the fair sex appeared inevitable in the case of a brilliant and unsteady widower. Coroneted heads had been frequently shaken over what seemed a foregone conclusion; and Guy had shared these fears. And behold, on his return, he found the nurse gone, the Gaiety girl expensively pensioned off, and the baronet, slightly lame, but with youth renewed by six months of enforced seclusion, apparently absorbed in a little brown governess who wore violet poplin and heavy brooches of Roman mosaic, but who (as Guy was soon to observe) had eyes like torches, and masses of curly-edged dark hair which she was beginning to braid less tightly, and to drag back less severely from her broad forehead.

Guy stood looking curiously at his father. The latter’s bluster no longer disturbed him; but he was uncomfortably reminded of certain occasions when Sir Helmsley, on the brink of an imprudent investment or an impossible marriage, had blushed and explained with the same volubility. Could this outbreak be caused by one of the same reasons? But no! A middle-aged governess? It was unthinkable. Sir Helmsley had always abhorred the edifying, especially in petticoats; and with his strong well-knit figure, his handsome auburn head, and a complexion clear enough for blushes, he still seemed, in spite of his accident, built for more alluring prey. His real interest, Guy concluded, was no doubt in the Rossetti kinship, and all that it offered to his insatiable imagination. But it made the son wonder anew what other mischief his inflammable parent had been up to during his own long absence. It would clearly be part of his business to look into his father’s sentimental history, and keep a sharp eye on his future. With these thoughts in his mind, Guy stood smiling down paternally on his father.

“Well, sir, it’s all right,” he said. “I’ve