The car rushed on, up a wide slope that curved handsomely so that the light played on meadows and startled the beasts of the fields.
“And you are so sure, Iris, that these three men, who have known you all your life and one of whom has loved you with all his heart ever since he saw you walk down South Audley Street, all brown stockings and blue eyes—you are so sure, Iris, that nothing they can say will touch you?”
The lights swept over great lodge-gates standing wide open before a curving avenue of tall trees. We passed beneath them, showering gold on their trunks. The drive shone like a yellow carpet beneath our lights.
“I tell you,” Iris whispered, “I shall be a very Saint George for steadfastness!”
The stork fled up the curving avenue of Sutton Marle. It seemed, to me, to crouch with fear beneath the noble line of trees. They stood above us like towers. I was afraid.
“This is the lion’s den, Iris!”
“Well, I have killed lions, and tigers too, in twelve years’ wandering through hell.”
“But this is the den of the king of lions, Iris! This is the den of the lion of England!”
“Love smiles at lions. Love can never be a clown, but a lion can wear an ass’s skin. Darling, I’m no good at natural history, but I have studied history.”
“You couldn’t mock it so unless you loved it very deeply. You are like a child, dear Iris, daring her father and mother. These trees—”
“But I laugh at the trees of Sutton Marle! I always did, I never could play with them, not even believe in them. I tell you, there is no tree but Harrod’s, my servant, and my master and my playmate tree, Harrod’s. Oh, how Harrod’s hates Sir Maurice! It makes me afraid, to think how Harrod’s hates Maurice Harpenden. Let him beware as he walks beneath it!”
Then the trees parted from above us and we came into an open place where stood a fountain, and round the fountain we swept a circle and came before the doors of a long white manor house. De Travest’s car stood there. As we drew up beside it the doors of the white house opened and a fat old man stood at the head of the steps. His hair was like his house, quite white.
“Truble, we will go round by the garden,” Iris said.
The fat old butler looked very gravely down at Iris. She was like a small knight at the foot of the broad steps, he a kindly old dragon up above. Oh, he looked so grave!
Iris said to me: “Mr. Truble is my oldest friend. He is a very nice man. Truble, what have you to say to that?”
“Sir Maurice did not expect you, Miss Iris.”
“How, Truble! Sir Maurice knew I was coming!”
“But he did not think you would come, Miss Iris. But his lordship expected you. The gentlemen are in the library.”
“His lordship, Truble, does me too much honour in thinking I can keep my word. … Truble, my dear!”
I had been looking round me when that sudden cry shook me like the cry of a bird in pain. The fat old butler was weeping, there was not a doubt of it. There at the head of the broad steps, quite motionless, a broad black shape under his white hair. Iris had him by the shoulder, was shaking him, her hat like a toy against that black shape.
“Truble,” she said, so huskily, “that I should ever have made you cry! My dear, my dear!”
“Sir,” the old man appealed to me down below with a funnily out-flung hand. “I never was so ashamed of myself in my life! But it came on me all of a sudden hearing Miss Iris say, here at the doors of Sutton Marle, in a voice as hard as that ash she was always in love with, that about his lordship doing her too much honour about her keeping her word. I held Miss Iris in my arms, sir, when she wasn’t above a year old, and now—I’m sure I beg your pardon, sir. And yours, Miss
