A Damsel in Distress

Life is like some crazy machine that is always going either too

slow or too fast. From the cradle to the grave we alternate between

the Sargasso Sea and the rapids--forever either becalmed or

storm-tossed. It seemed to Maud, as she looked across the

dinner-table in order to make sure for the twentieth time that it

really was George Bevan who sat opposite her, that, after months in

which nothing whatever had happened, she was now living through a

period when everything was happening at once. Life, from being a

broken-down machine, had suddenly begun to race.

To the orderly routine that stretched back to the time when she had

been hurried home in disgrace from Wales there had succeeded a mad

whirl of events, to which the miracle of tonight had come as a

fitting climax. She had not begun to dress for dinner till somewhat

late, and had consequently entered the drawing-room just as Keggs

was announcing that the meal was ready. She had received her first

shock when the love-sick Plummer, emerging from a mixed crowd of

relatives and friends, had informed her that he was to take her in.

She had not expected Plummer to be there, though he lived in the

neighbourhood. Plummer, at their last meeting, had stated his

intention of going abroad for a bit to mend his bruised heart: and

it was a little disconcerting to a sensitive girl to find her

victim popping up again like this. She did not know that, as far as

Plummer was concerned, the whole affair was to be considered opened

again. To Plummer, analysing the girl's motives in refusing him,

there had come the idea that there was Another, and that this other

must be Reggie Byng. From the first he had always looked upon

Reggie as his worst rival. And now Reggie had bolted with the

Faraday girl, leaving Maud in excellent condition, so it seemed to

Plummer, to console herself with a worthier man. Plummer knew all

about the Rebound and the part it plays in the affairs of the

heart. His own breach-of-promise case two years earlier had been

entirely due to the fact that the refusal of the youngest Devenish

girl to marry him had caused him to rebound into the dangerous

society of the second girl from the O.P. end of the first row in

the "Summertime is Kissing-time" number in the Alhambra revue. He

had come to the castle tonight gloomy, but not without hope.

Maud's second shock eclipsed the first entirely. No notification

had been given to her either by her father or by Percy of the

proposed extension of the hand of hospitality to George, and the

sight of him standing there talking to her aunt Caroline made her

momentarily dizzy. Life, which for several days had had all the

properties now of a dream, now of a nightmare, became more unreal

than ever. She could conceive no explanation of George's presence.

He could not be there--that was all there was to it; yet there

undoubtedly he was. Her manner, as she accompanied Plummer down the

stairs, took on such a dazed sweetness that her escort felt that in

coming there that night he had done the wisest act of a lifetime

studded but sparsely with wise acts. It seemed to Plummer that this

girl had softened towards him. Certainly something had changed her.

He could not know that she was merely wondering if she was awake.