"Yes, Master Archie, for a boy you were," said Blessington. "Boys are more trouble than girls, as is natural and proper."

"But doesn't Sapum enter into girls, too?" asked he, with another thought in his mind.

"Yes, to be sure, but not so violent-like. And when after that you were took ill, and we all went out to—eh, what's the name of that place in Switzerland—I must say you were wonderfully good. It was as if some angel took possession of you, not one of Sapum's flibertigibbits. You were no trouble at all; and see how quick you got well."

Archie rocked himself backwards and forwards for a minute in silence.

"I wish I could remember Martin," he said at length. "Tell me something about Martin."

"Eh, dear lamb!" said she. "Couldn't he be naughty too, when the fit took him! But then he got ill, and many's the time when I've longed for him to be naughty again, and he hadn't the spirit for it. He didn't want to die, and right up to the end he thought he'd get better. You papa never loved any one like he loved him, and nobody could help loving him. He was like a April morning, dear—sunshine one minute and squalls the next. And there was months, Master Archie, when we thought you would follow him."

Blessington grew a little tearful, with the sweet, easy tears of old-age over this, and Archie changed the subject.

"And Abracadabra, now?" he asked. "What evenings those birthdays evenings were, weren't they? I wish Abracadabra came still, bringing all we wanted. What would you choose, Blessington?"

Blessington beamed again.

"Eh, I know what I'd choose," she said. "I'd choose a nice young lady to come here, and you and she take a fancy to each other, dear. That's what I'd choose. Isn't there some nice young lady, Master Archie?"

Archie stopped his rocking for a moment, and a bitter word was on the end of his tongue. Then he smiled back at his nurse's radiant face.

"I'm going to marry you, Blessington," he said, "when you're old enough.

Don't you go flirting with anybody else now."

Blessington gave a little cackle of soft, toothless laughter.

"Well, I never," she said. "Who ever heard such a thing?"

"Well, you've heard of it now," said he. "Blessington, I believe there's somebody else after you. I say, did you ever have any lovers once upon a time?"

Blessington looked solemn again.

"Well, there was your papa's game-keeper once," she said, "who made a silly of himself, as if I'd got nothing better to do than go and marry him. I didn't suffer any of his nonsense… And there's the sound of the motor. That'll be your mamma and Miss Jessie coming. There's a nice young lady now!"

"Do you like her better than Miss Helena?" asked Archie.

Blessington nodded her head very emphatically.

"Not that I say she isn't a nice young lady, too," she said mysteriously.

"What's the matter with her then?" asked Archie.

Blessington looked the incarnation of discretion.

"I say nothing," she said. "But there's some as are artful, and some as are not. Now, my dear, you must go and see your mamma, or she'll be wondering where you are."

"I'm with my young woman," said Archie.

"There! Get along with you," said Blessington. "Eh, Master Archie, I love a talk over old times with you."

* * * * *

Archie went reluctantly away to greet his mother and Jessie, for these talks with Blessington had become to him a sort of oasis in this weary wilderness of scorching sand through which he had to travel all day and for many hours of the night. She was the comforter of the troubles of his earliest childhood; it was she who had always been by him if some nightmare snatched him from sleep, or if the dark developed terrors, and that habit of calling on her for aid, established among the mists of dawning consciousness he found still alive as an instinct, when there came on him now the maturer woes of love and manhood. Throughout his school life and his three years at Cambridge, he had never quite let go of Blessington's hand, which had been the first to direct and sustain his tottering attempts at locomotion. Now, too, she was the only member of his immediate circle who did not know of his trouble, and it was an unutterable relief to feel that he was not being pitied and sympathized with by somebody. For, though there is nothing in the world better than sympathy and pity, no sufferer smarting from a recent wound wants to live exclusively in such surroundings. Pity and sympathy, though they heal, yet touch the wound, and he never got over the impression when he was with his mother, for instance, that his wound was being dressed… Jessie did not force that on him so much, yet with her he was always being reminded of the fact that she was Helena's sister. But with Blessington he could go back into the sunlight of the past: talk with her, and another occupation, temporary, he told himself, to tide him over those days, enabled him to get away to some extent, from himself.

He met his mother in the hall, and instantly those anxious eyes of love, which, for all his affection for her, he found irritating, were on him. She was at his wound again, taking off the bandages, seeing how it was getting on…

"And how are you, darling?" she said, looking at him with the tenderness that got on his nerves.

Archie kissed her.

"I am quite well, thanks," he said. "I have just been having a talk with

Blessington."

"My dear, how she would like that!" said Lady Tintagel with eager cordiality. "That was thoughtful of you."

Archie jerked himself away from her: though his mother said nothing direct, he felt that pity filled her mind. He was in its presence, and longed to get away from it. All the time another distinct piece of his mind wanted to hear about Helena. But he could not ask any question about her.

"How are you, Archie?" said Jessie quietly.

Archie's exasperation suddenly flared up.

"I have just told my mother I am very well," he said. "I am still very well, thank you."

Jessie laughed; she managed better than Lady Tintagel.

"In that case, come and have a game of golf-croquet with me," she said. "There's time before we need dress, isn't there? I do want some air so badly after town."

Archie glanced at the clock; he usually went to his father's study about this time, when they celebrated the approaching advent of dinner with a cocktail or two. That was the beginning of the tolerable part of the day: there was plenty of wine at dinner, and afterwards a succession of whiskies and sodas, and to be alive became quite a bearable condition again. On that first evening when Helena had told him her news and paid her half-crowns he had found that alcohol broke down his sense of being stunned, of being made of wood. Now he drank for another reason: by drink he got rid of the misery of normal consciousness and emerged into some sort of life again. It stimulated his brain, he could by its means escape for a little from that one perpetual thought of Helena that went round in his head like a stick in a backwater, and get into the current again. Sometimes he would go to his room, taking a whisky and soda with him, and wrestle with the sea-sketches he had so enthusiastically worked at at Silorno. By degrees the liquid in his glass ebbed, and his pile of cigarette-ends mounted, and he would go back for fresh supplies. But, while these hours lasted, he lived, and what to-morrow should bring he did not in the least care. He could escape for a few hours now, and that was sufficient. Also, when he went to bed, he could sleep heavily and dreamlessly.

There was still time for a game with Jessie, before going in to his father; Jessie would take longer to dress for dinner than he, and there would be a few minutes to spare after she went upstairs. But, even as they were strolling across the lawn to get the croquet-balls from their box, she a little ahead of him as he nursed a match for his cigarette, he looked up, and there in front of him might have been Helena. The two were of the same height and build, they moved like each other. It was Jessie, of course, but just for a second, while his match burned up in the hollow of his hand, it was not she at all…

He threw the match away.

"Get the balls out, will you?" he said. "I've left my cigarette-case in my father's room."

He ran back to the house, and went in through the garden door of his father's study. Lord Tintagel was sitting in the big leather arm-chair, with his feet up on another, and a glass beside him.

"Just come for a cocktail, father," said Archie. "Hullo, they're not here yet. It doesn't matter; I'll take a glass of whisky and soda."

"By all means; take what you like," said the other drowsily. "You mother's come, hasn't she?"

"Yes, mother and Jessie," said Archie, pouring himself out some whisky. The soda-water was nearly exhausted, but the dregs of it gurgled pleasantly over the spirit. He drank it in a couple of gulps.

"What are you going to do now?" asked his father.

"Only have a game with Jessie."