Of her charm for me, a lad with a sneaking regard for the pen, even when
I buckled on the sword, I need not be too analytical. No doubt about her
kindly interest, in the first instance, in so morbid a curiosity as a
subaltern who cared for books and was prepared to extend his gracious
patronage to pictures. This subaltern had only too much money, and if
the truth be known, only too little honest interest in the career into
which he had allowed himself to drift. An early stage of that career
brought him up to London, where family pressure drove him on a day to
Elm Park Gardens. The rest is easily conceived. Here was a woman, still
young, though some years older than oneself; attractive, intellectual,
amusing, the soul of sympathy, at once a spiritual influence and the
best companion in the world; and for a time, at least, she had taken a
perhaps imprudent interest in a lad whom she so greatly interested
herself, on so many and various accounts. Must you marvel that the
young fool mistook the interest, on both sides, for a more intense
feeling, of which he for one had no experience at the time, and that he
fell by his mistake at a ridiculously early stage of his career?

It is, I grant, more surprising to find the same young man playing Harry
Esmond (at due distance) to the same Lady Castlewood after years in
India and a taste of two wars. But Catherine's room was Catherine's
room, a very haunt of the higher sirens, charged with noble promptings
and forgotten influences and impossible vows. And you will please bear
in mind that as yet I am but setting forth, from this rarefied
atmosphere, upon my invidious mission.




CHAPTER II