She took her father’s arm, and moved on with him to the door of the greenhouse.  At the steps, she turned and looked round to see if Frank was following her.  It was only the action of a moment; but in that moment her natural firmness of will rallied all its resources—­strengthened itself with the influence of her beauty —­commanded—­and conquered.  She looked lovely:  the flush was tenderly bright in her cheeks; the radiant pleasure shone and sparkled in her eyes; the position of her figure, turned suddenly from the waist upward, disclosed its delicate strength, its supple firmness, its seductive, serpentine grace.  “Come!” she said, with a coquettish beckoning action of her head.  “Come, Frank!”

Few men of forty would have resisted her at that moment.  Frank was twenty last birthday.  In other words, he threw aside his cigar, and followed her out of the greenhouse.

As he turned and closed the door—­in the instant when he lost sight of her—­his disinclination to be associated with the private theatricals revived.  At the foot of the house-steps he stopped again; plucked a twig from a plant near him; broke it in his hand; and looked about him uneasily, on this side and on that.  The path to the left led back to his father’s cottage—­the way of escape lay open.  Why not take it?

While he still hesitated, Mr. Vanstone and his daughter reached the top of the steps.  Once more, Magdalen looked round—­looked with her resistless beauty, with her all-conquering smile.  She beckoned again; and again he followed her—­up the steps, and over the threshold.  The door closed on them.

So, with a trifling gesture of invitation on one side, with a trifling act of compliance on the other:  so—­with no knowledge in his mind, with no thought in hers, of the secret still hidden under the journey to London—­they took the way which led to that secret’s discovery, through many a darker winding that was yet to come.

CHAPTER V.

MR. VANSTONE’S inquiries into the proposed theatrical entertainment at Evergreen Lodge were answered by a narrative of dramatic disasters; of which Miss Marrable impersonated the innocent cause, and in which her father and mother played the parts of chief victims.

Miss Marrable was that hardest of all born tyrants—­an only child.  She had never granted a constitutional privilege to her oppressed father and mother since the time when she cut her first tooth.  Her seventeenth birthday was now near at hand; she had decided on celebrating it by acting a play; had issued her orders accordingly; and had been obeyed by her docile parents as implicitly as usual.  Mrs. Marrable gave up the drawing-room to be laid waste for a stage and a theater.  Mr. Marrable secured the services of a respectable professional person to drill the young ladies and gentlemen, and to accept all the other responsibilities incidental to creating a dramatic world out of a domestic chaos.