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![the strange return of gyges’ ring: an introduction xxv
The ability or inability to maintain privacy, construct our own identities,
control the use of our identifiers, decide for ourselves what is known about us,
and, in some cases, disconnect our actions from our identifiers will ultimately
have profound implications for individual and group behavior. It will affect the
extent to which people, corporations, and governments choose to engage in
global electronic commerce, social media, and other important features of the
network society. It will affect the way that we think of ourselves, the way we
choose to express ourselves, the way that we make moral decisions, and our will-
ingness and ability to fully participate in political processes. Yet our current
philosophical, social, and political understandings of the impact and importance
of privacy, identity, and anonymity in a network society are simplistic and poorly
developed, as is our understanding of the broader social impact of emerging
network technologies on existing legal, ethical, regulatory, and social structures.
This book investigates these issues from a number of North American and
European perspectives. Our joint examination is structured around three core
organizing themes: (1) privacy, (2) identity, and (3) anonymity.
privacy
The jurist Hyman Gross once described privacy as a concept “infected with per-
nicious ambiguities.”2
More recently, Canadian Supreme Court Justice Ian
Binnie expressed a related worry, opining that “privacy is protean.”3
The judge’s
metaphor is rather telling when one recalls that Proteus was a shape-shifter who
would transform in order to avoid answering questions about the future. Perhaps
U.S. novelist Jonathan Franzen had something similar in mind when he charac-
terized privacy as the “Cheshire cat of values.”4
One wonders whether privacy will suffer the same fate as Lewis Carroll’s
enigmatic feline—all smile and no cat.
Certainly, that is what Larry Ellison seems to think. Ellison is the CEO of
Oracle Corporation and the fourteenth richest person alive. In the aftermath of
September 11, 2001, Ellison offered to donate to the U.S. Government software
that would enable a national identification database, boldly stating in 2004 that
“The privacy you’re concerned about is largely an illusion. All you have to give
up is your illusions, not any of your privacy.”5
As someone who understands
the power of network databases to profile people right down to their skivvies
2. Hyman Gross, “The Concept of Privacy,” N.Y.U.L. REV. 43 (1967): 34–35.
3. R. v Tessling, 2004 SCC 67, [2004] 3 S.C.R. 432, per Justice Binnie, at 25.
4. Jonathan Franzen, How to Be Alone: Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
2003), 42.
5. Larry Ellison, quoted in L. Gordon Crovitz, “Privacy? We Got Over It” The Wall Street
Journal, A11, August 25, 2008, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121962391804567765.
html?mod=rss_opinion_main.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/103754-250309001254-502cd04e/75/Lessons-From-The-Identity-Trail-Anonymity-Privacy-And-Identity-In-A-Networked-Society-1st-Edition-Edition-Ian-Kerr-20-2048.jpg)
![xxvi the strange return of gyges’ ring: an introduction
(and not only to provide desirable recommendations for a better brand!), Ellison’s
view of the future of privacy is bleak. Indeed, many if not most contemporary
discussions of privacy are about its erosion in the face of new and emerging
technologies. Ellison was, in fact, merely reiterating a sentiment that had already
been expressed some five years earlier by his counterpart at Sun Microsystems,
Scott McNealy, who advised a group of journalists gathered to learn about Sun’s
data-sharing software: “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.”6
To turn Hyman Gross’s eloquent quotation on its head—the Ellison/McNealy
conception of privacy is infected with ambiguous perniciousness. It disingenu-
ously—or perhaps even malevolently—equivocates between two rather different
notions of privacy in order to achieve a self-interested outcome: it starts with a
descriptive account of privacy as the level of control an individual enjoys over her
or his personal information and then draws a prescriptive conclusion that, because
new technologies will undermine the possibility of personal control, we therefore
ought not to expect any privacy.
Of course, the privacy that many of us expect is not contingent upon or
conditioned by the existence or prevalence of any given technology. Privacy is a
normative concept that reflects a deeply held set of values that predates and is
not rendered irrelevant by the network society. To think otherwise is to commit
what philosopher G. E. Moore called the “naturalistic fallacy,”7
or as Lawrence
Lessig has restyled it, the “is-ism”:
The mistake of confusing how something is with how it must be. There is
certainly a way that cyberspace is. But how cyberspace is is not how cyber-
space has to be. There is no single way that the net has to be; no single
architecture that defines the nature of the net. The possible architectures
of something that we would call “the net” are many, and the character of
life within those different architectures are [sic] diverse.8
Although the “character of life” of privacy has, without question, become
more diverse in light of technologies of both the privacy-diminishing and privacy-
preserving variety, the approach adopted in this book is to understand privacy as
a normative concept. In this approach, the existence of privacy rights will not
simply depend on whether our current technological infrastructure has reshaped
our privacy expectations in the descriptive sense. It is not a like-it-or-lump-it
proposition. At the same time, it is recognized that the meaning, importance,
impact, and implementation of privacy may need to evolve alongside the emer-
genceofnewtechnologies.Howprivacyoughttobeunderstood—andfostered—in
6. Ibid., Scott McNealy quote.
7. G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903).
8. Lawrence Lessig, Code: And Other Laws of Cyberspace, Version 2.0 (New York: Basic
Books, 2006): 32.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/103754-250309001254-502cd04e/75/Lessons-From-The-Identity-Trail-Anonymity-Privacy-And-Identity-In-A-Networked-Society-1st-Edition-Edition-Ian-Kerr-21-2048.jpg)
![the strange return of gyges’ ring: an introduction xxvii
a network society certainly requires an appreciation of and reaction to new and
emerging network technologies and their role in society.
Given that the currency of the network society is information, it is not totally
surprising that privacy rights have more recently been recharacterized by courts
as a kind of “informational self-determination.”9
Drawing on Alan Westin’s
classic definition of informational privacy as “the claim of individuals, groups, or
institutions to determine for themselves when, how, and to what extent informa-
tion about them is communicated to others,”10
many jurisdictions have adopted
fair information practice principles11
as the basis for data protection regimes.12
These principles and the laws that support them are not a panacea, as they have
been developed and implemented on the basis of an unhappy compromise
between those who view privacy as a fundamental human right and those who
view it as an economic right.13
From one perspective, these laws aim to protect
privacy, autonomy, and dignity interests. From another, they are the lowest
common denominator of fairness in the information trade. Among other things,
it is thought that fair information practice principles have the potential to be
technology neutral, meaning that they apply to any and all technologies so that
privacy laws do not have to be rewritten each time a new privacy-implicating
technology comes along. A number of chapters in this book challenge that view.
Our examination of privacy in Part I of this book begins with the very fulcrum
of the fair information practice principles—the doctrine of consent. Consent is
often seen as the legal proxy for autonomous choice and is therefore anchored in
the traditional paradigm of the classical liberal individual, which is typically
thought to provide privacy’s safest harbor. As an act of ongoing agency, consent
can also function as a gatekeeper for the collection, use, and disclosure of per-
sonal information. As several of our chapters demonstrate, however, consent
can also be manipulated, and reliance on it can generate unintended conse-
quences in and outside of privacy law. Consequently, we devote several chapters
9. Known in German as “Informationelles selbstbestimmung,” this expression was
first used jurisprudentially in Volkszählungsurteil vom 15. Dezember 1983, BVerfGE 65, 1,
German Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgerichts) 1983.
10. Alan Westin, Privacy and Freedom (New York: Atheneum, 1967): 7.
11. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Guidelines Governing
theProtectionofPrivacyandTransborderFlowsofPersonalData,AnnextotheRecommendation
of the Council of 23 September 1980, http://www.oecd.org/document/18/0,3343,en_2649_
34255_1815186_1_1_1_1,00.html.
12. Article 29 of Directive EC, Council Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament
and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the
processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, [1995] O.J. L. 281: 31;
Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, S.C. 2000, c. 5.
13. Canada. House of Commons Standing Committee on Human Rights and the
Status of Persons with Disabilities. 35th Parliament, 2nd Session. Privacy: Where Do We
Draw the Line? (Ottawa: Public Works and Government Services Canada, 1997).](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/103754-250309001254-502cd04e/75/Lessons-From-The-Identity-Trail-Anonymity-Privacy-And-Identity-In-A-Networked-Society-1st-Edition-Edition-Ian-Kerr-22-2048.jpg)
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- 5. Lessons From TheIdentity Trail Anonymity Privacy And Identity In A Networked Society 1st Edition Edition Ian Kerr Digital Instant Download Author(s): Ian Kerr, Carole Lucock, Valerie Steeves ISBN(s): 9780199707010, 0199707014 Edition: 1st Edition File Details: PDF, 3.76 MB Year: 2009 Language: english
- 7. 1 Oxford University Press,Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright © 2009 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press Oxford University Press is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press, Inc. All rights reserved. Subject to the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Canadian License, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press, Inc. _____________________________________________ Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lessons from the identity trail : anonymity, privacy and identity in a networked society / Editors : Ian Kerr, Valerie Steeves, Carole Lucock. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-19-537247-2 ((hardback) : alk. paper) 1. Data protection—Law and legislation. 2. Identity. 3. Privacy, Right of. 4. Computer security—Law and legislation. 5. Freedom of information. I. Kerr, Ian (Ian R.) II. Lucock, Carole. III. Steeves, Valerie M., 1959- K3264.C65L47 2009 342.08’58—dc22 2008043016 _____________________________________________ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Note to Readers This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is based upon sources believed to be accurate and reliable and is intended to be current as of the time it was written. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional services. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. Also, to confirm that the information has not been affected or changed by recent developments, traditional legal research techniques should be used, including checking primary sources where appropriate. (Based on the Declaration of Principles jointly adopted by a Committee of the American Bar Association and a Committee of Publishers and Associations.) You may order this or any other Oxford University Press publication by visiting the Oxford University Press website at www.oup.com
- 8. about this book Thisbook derives from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Initiative on the New Economy. Recognizing that the increased speed of technological development and the rapid growth of knowledge are contribut- ing to major social, cultural, and personal change worldwide, SSHRC held a research competition to promote collaborative, multisectoral work on these issues. One of the research teams successful in the 2003 competition received a four-year, $4 million grant in support of a project entitled On The Identity Trail: Understanding the Importance and Impact of Anonymity and Authentication in a Networked Society. With a focus on multidisciplinary dialogue and interaction, ID Trail brought together North American and European research talent from the academic, public, private, and not-for-profit sectors. With more than fifty co-investigators, collaborators, researchers, and partners, ID Trail included a distinguished array of philosophers, ethicists, feminists, cognitive scientists, sociologists, lawyers, cryptographers, engineers, policy analysts, government policymakers, privacy experts, business leaders, blue chip companies, and successful start-ups. This book, one of four full-length volumes produced by ID Trail, is the outcome of two international workshops on privacy, identity, and anonymity. The first workshop was held in Paris, France, in 2006 and was hosted by the Atelier Internet, Équipe Réseaux, Savoirs, and Territoires at the École Normale, Supérieure. The second workshop was held in Bologna, Italy, in 2007 and was hosted by Dipartimento di Scienze Giuridiche at Università di Bologna. Participants from both workshops exchanged ideas and manuscripts with the aim of creating a volume that would ultimately become an organic whole greater than the sum of its individual chapter contributions. In fulfillment of an under- taking to SSHRC to dedicate significant resources to student training initiatives, two competitions were held, and funding was provided to include ten students as full workshop participants. These and numerous other highly talented ID Trail student collaborators have made substantial contributions to this book, including a dozen as authors or co-authors. In addition to the collaborative feedback that authors received at the work- shops, each chapter included in this volume was subject to an anonymous peer review process prior to its submission to Oxford University Press.
- 9. acknowledgments This book, likethe ID Trail project itself, owes its existence to significant funding and other equally important forms of support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and a number of private and public sector partners, including the Alberta Civil Liberties Association Research Centre, Bell University Labs, the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, Centre on Values and Ethics, the Department of Justice, Entrust Technologies, Electronic Privacy Information Center, IBM Canada Ltd., Management Board Secretariat Ontario, Microsoft, the Office of the Information and Privacy Commission of Ontario, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, the Ontario Research Network in Electronic Commerce, Privacy International, and the Sheldon Chumir Foundation for Leadership in Ethics. We are thankful for the support provided and could not have produced this volume or any of our other key research outcomes without the help of these organizations. As a project that has sought to mobilize key research outputs in accessible language and across a variety of venues in order to assist policymakers and the broader public, we have worked closely with Canada’s Federal and Provincial Information and Privacy Commissioners. We thank them for their invaluable time, effort, and contributions to our work and for their general interest and support. Thanks also to Stephanie Perrin, a longtime member of Canada’s privacy advocacy community, for her role in putting us on the map during the early years of the project. A number of universities and groups have collaborated with us on this book. In particular, we would like to show appreciation to Giusella Finocchiaro and the Università di Bologna, as well as Bert-Jaap Koops, Ronald Leenes, and members of the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society for wonderful and animating discussions on the topics we all treasure so dearly. As our base of operations, the University of Ottawa has been central to everything we have accomplished. Special thanks are due to Gilles Morier and Daniel Lefebvre for their superb and supererogatory efforts in helping us run the show, and to Common Law Dean Bruce Feldthusen, for always saying, “How can I help make it happen?” With more than a hundred undergraduate, graduate, and postgradu- ate students working with the project over a four-year period, it is not possible to thank each by name. There are two, however, whose extraordinary involvement at the outset of the project made it possible for all of the others to participate. Our heartfelt appreciation goes to Milana Homsi and Nur Muhammed-Ally for getting the ball rolling. Similar thanks is owed to Francine Guenette, our first project administrator, for paving the road to success. Your special efforts were deeply valued.
- 10. xiv acknowledgments Finding harmonyamong so many different voices while preserving the distinctness of each is no small task. To Amanda Leslie, our über-talented, lightning-quick, and highly reliable copyeditor, we feel privileged to have had the opportunity to work with you on this project. Thanks also to our acquisitions editor, Chris Collins, the ever-helpful Isel Pizarro, and to Jaimee Biggins and all members of the production team at Oxford University Press who have helped improve the quality of this book. We are also grateful to thirty or so anonymous reviewers for their effort and good judgment, upon which we greatly relied. Finally, our deepest and everlasting gratitude is owed to Julia Ladouceur, our project administrator, whose playful smile and gentle manner belie her stunning ability to do just about anything. Always with kindness, always with generosity, and always with a bedazzling perfection that somehow renders invisible any remnant or recollection of the fact that the world was never that way on its own.
- 11. contributors carlisle adams Carlisle Adamsis a Full Professor in the School of Information Technology and Engineering (SITE) at the University of Ottawa. In both his private sector and his academic work, he has focused on the standardization of cryptology and security technologies for the Internet, and his technical contributions include encryption algorithms, security authentication protocols, and a comprehensive architecture and policy language for access control in electronic environments. He can be reached at cadams@site.uottawa.ca. jane bailey Jane Bailey is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa. Her ongoing research focuses on the impact of evolving technology on signifi- cant public commitments to equality rights, freedom of expression, and multi- culturalism, as well as the societal and cultural impact of the Internet and emerging forms of private technological control, particularly in relation to mem- bers of socially disadvantaged communities. She can be reached at jane.bailey@ uottawa.ca. jennifer barrigar A doctoral candidate in the Law and Technology Program at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law, Jennifer Barrigar previously worked as legal counsel at the Office of the Privacy Commissioner in Canada. Her current privacy research builds on her interest in the creation, performance, and regulation of identities in online environments, focusing on the creation of the exclusively online “self” and its implications for privacy law and identity management technologies. She can be reached at jbarr072@uottawa.ca. katie black Katie Black is an LLB Candidate at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law. Her interest in privacy rights has led her to conduct research on the human rights implications of Canada’s no-fly list, the effects of battered women’s support pro- grams on personal identity, soft paternalism and soft surveillance in consent- gathering processes, and the impact of opening up adoption records on women’s reproductive autonomy. She can be reached at kblac044@uottawa.ca. jacquelyn burkell Jacquelyn Burkell is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Information and Media Studies, University of Western Ontario. Trained in psychology, she conducts
- 12. xvi contributors empirical researchon the interaction between people and technology, with a particular emphasis on the role of cognition in such interactions. Much of her work focuses on anonymity in online communication, examining how the pseudonymity offered by online communication is experienced by online com- municators and how this experience changes communication behavior and interpretation. She can be reached at jburkell@uwo.ca. alex cameron Alex Cameron is a doctoral candidate in the Law and Technology Program at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law. He was previously an associate at the law firm of Fasken Martineau Dumoulin LLP. His current studies focus on privacy and copyright with a focus on the interplay between privacy and digital rights management. He can be reached at acameron@uottawa.ca. robert carey Robert Carey is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Faculty of Information and Media Studies, the University of Western Ontario. His research at the Faculty concen- trates on four different strands of anonymity-related research: conceptual and behavioral models of anonymity on the Internet; behavioral effects of anonymity in computer-mediated communication; the conceptualization of anonymity; and mass media’s configuration of anonymity and information technology. He can be reached at rcarey2@uwo.ca. jennifer chandler Jennifer Chandler is an Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law. She focuses on law, science, and technology, particularly the social and environmental effects of emerging technologies and the interaction of emerging technologies with law and regulation. She has written extensively in the areas of cybersecurity and cybertorts. She can be reached at jennifer.chandler@uottawa.ca. jeremy clark Jeremy Clark is a doctoral candidate with the Centre for Applied Cryptographic Research (CACR) and the Cryptography, Security, and Privacy (CrySP) Group at the University of Waterloo. His research focuses on cryptographic voting, as well as privacy enhancing technologies, applied cryptography, the economics of infor- mation security, and usable security and privacy. He can be reached at j5clark@ cs.uwaterloo.ca. steven davis Steven Davis is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Simon Fraser University and the former Director of the Centre on Values and Ethics at Carleton University. He researches philosophy of language and philosophy of mind, and his recent research has focused on privacy, identifying, and identification. He can be reached at davis@connect.carleton.ca.
- 13. contributors xvii jane doe JaneDoe successfully sued the Toronto Police Force for negligence and discrimi- nation in the investigation of her rape, a case that set legal precedent and is taught in law schools across Canada. Jane Doe is an author (The Story of Jane Doe, Random House), teacher, and community organizer. She is currently completing research on the use and efficacy of the Sexual Assault Evidence Kit (SEAK) and police practices of “warning” women regarding stranger and serial rapists. giusella finocchiaro Giusella Finocchiaro is Professor of Internet Law and Private Law at the University of Bologna. She specializes in Internet law both at her own Finocchiaro law firm and as a consultant for other law firms. She also acts as a consultant for the European Union on Internet law issues. She can be reached at giusella.finocchiaro @unibo.it. a. michael froomkin A. Michael Froomkin is Professor of Law at the University of Miami, Faculty of Law. He is on the advisory boards of several organizations including the Electronic Freedom Foundation and BNA Electronic Information Policy and Law Report, is a member of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, and writes the well-known discourse.net blog. His research interests include Internet governance, privacy, and electronic democracy. He can be reached at froomkin@law.tm. philippe gauvin Philippe Gauvin completed his Master’s Degree in Law and Technology at the University of Ottawa and is currently working as counsel, regulatory affairs, for Bell Canada. His work consists of ensuring the company’s regulatory compliance with privacy, copyright, telecommunications, and broadcasting laws. He can be reached at philippe.gauvin@bell.ca. daphne gilbert Daphne Gilbert is an Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law. Her privacy research focuses on the constitutionalized protection of online expression and privacy, and she has an interest in the ethics of compelling cooperation between private organizations and law enforcement and in the expectations of user privacy online. She can be reached at dgilbert@uottawa.ca. marsha hanen Marsha Hanen is a former president of the University of Winnipeg and an Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the University of Victoria. She was the presi- dent of the Sheldon Chumir Foundation for Ethics in Leadership from 1999 to 2006. Throughout her career, she has had a broad and deep interest in ethics, philosophy of science, and philosophy of law. Recently she has published on
- 14. xviii contributors patient privacyand anonymity in medical contexts. She can be reached at mhanen@chumirethicsfoundation.ca. daniel c. howe Daniel C. Howe is a digital artist and researcher at NYU’s Media Research Lab where he is completing his PhD thesis on generative literary systems. His pri- vacy research has led to TrackMeNot, an artware intervention addressing data profiling on the Internet, which he has worked on with Helen Nissenbaum. He can be reached at dhowe@mrl.nyu.edu. ian kerr Ian Kerr holds the Canada Research Chair in Ethics, Law, and Technology at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law with cross-appointments to the Faculty of Medicine, the Department of Philosophy, and the School of Information Studies. He is also the principal investigator of the ID Trail project. Among other things, he is interested in human-machine mergers and the manner in which new and emerging technologies alter our perceptions, conceptions, and expectations of privacy. He can be reached at iankerr@uottawa.ca. bert-jaap koops Bert-Jaap Koops is Professor of Regulation and Technology and the former academic director of the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society (TILT) at Tilburg University. His privacy research primarily focuses on cryptography, identity-related crime, and DNA forensics. He can be reached at e.j.koops@uvt.nl. philippa lawson Philippa Lawson is the former Director of the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), based at the University of Ottawa. Through her research and advocacy work, she has represented consumer interests in privacy issues before policy and law-making bodies. She can be reached at lawson. pippa@gmail.com. ronald leenes Ronald Leenes is an Associate Professor at the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society (TILT) at Tilburg University. His primary research interests are privacy and identity management, and regulation of, and by, tech- nology. He is also involved in research in ID fraud, biometrics, and online dispute resolution. He can be reached at r.e.leenes@uvt.nl. ian lloyd Ian Lloyd is Professor of Information Technology Law at the University of Strathclyde Law School. He has researched and written extensively on data
- 15. contributors xix protection andhas recently worked on the Data Protection Programme (DAPRO), funded by the European Union. He can be reached at i.j.lloyd@strath.ac.uk. carole lucock Carole Lucock is a doctoral candidate in the Law and Technology Program at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law, and is project manager of the ID Trail. Her research interests include the intersection of privacy, anonymity, and identity, and the potential distinctions between imposed versus assumed anonymity. She can be reached at clucock@uottawa.ca. shoshana magnet Shoshana Magnet is a Postdoctoral Fellow at McGill University. She has been appointed as an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Women’s Studies at the University of Ottawa, commencing in 2009. Her privacy research includes biometrics, borders, and the relationship between privacy and equality. She can be reached at shoshana.magnet@uottawa.ca. gary t. marx Gary T. Marx is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at MIT and recently held the position of Hixon-Riggs Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, California. He has written extensively about surveil- lance, and his current research focuses on new forms of surveillance and social control across borders. He can be reached at gtmarx@mit.edu. david matheson David Matheson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Carleton University. Through his privacy-related research, he has written about privacy and knowableness, anonymity and responsible testimony, layperson authentication of contested experts, privacy and personal security, the nature of personal information, and the importance of privacy for friendship. He can be reached at david_matheson@carleton.ca. jena mcgill Jena McGill holds an LLB from the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law and an MA from the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. She is currently clerking at the Supreme Court of Canada. She has a strong interest in equality and privacy rights, particularly as they relate to gender issues on a national and international scale. She can be reached at jena.mcgill@gmail.com. jason millar Jason Millar is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Philosophy at Queens University. He is interested in the intersection of ethics, philosophy of technology,
- 16. xx contributors and philosophyof mind. His research interests also include cryptography and personal area networks in cyborg applications, particularly their impact on the concept of identity and anonymity. He can be reached at jasonxmillar@gmail.com. helen nissenbaum Helen Nissenbaum is Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University and a Faculty Fellow of the Information Law Institute. She researches ethical and political issues relating to information technology and new media, with a particular emphasis on privacy, the politics of search engines, and values embodied in the design of information technologies and systems. She can be reached at helen.nissenbaum@nyu.edu. mary o’donoghue Mary O’Donoghue is Senior Counsel and Manager of Legal Services at the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario. She is currently an executive member of the Privacy Law section of the Ontario Bar Association and her privacy research has focused on the constitutional and legal aspects of anonymity. She can be reached at mary.o’donoghue@ipc.on.ca. david j. phillips David J. Phillips is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto. His research focuses on the political economy and social shaping of information and communication technologies, in particular surveillance and identification technologies. He can be reached at davidj.phillips@utoronto.ca. charles d. raab Charles D. Raab is Professor Emeritus of Government at the School of Social and Political Studies at the University of Edinburgh. His privacy research focuses on surveillance and information policy, with an emphasis on privacy protection and public access to information. He can be reached at c.d.raab@ed.ac.uk. valerie steeves Valerie Steeves is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminology and the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa. Her main research focus is human rights and technology issues. She has written and spoken extensively on privacy from a human rights perspective and is an active participant in the privacy policymaking process in Canada. She can be reached at vsteeves@uottawa.ca. anne uteck Anne Uteck is a doctoral candidate in the Law and Technology Program at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law. Her research is on spatial privacy and other privacy interests outside the informational context implicated by emerging
- 17. contributors xxi surveillance technologies.Recently, she has published on the topic of radio frequency identification (RFID) and consumer privacy. She can be reached at eutec066@uottawa.ca. simone van der hof Simone van der Hof is a Senior Research Fellow and Assistant Professor at the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society (TILT) of Tilburg University. Her main research interests are social and legal issues with respect to identity management in electronic public service delivery, regulatory issues concerning profiling technologies and personalization of public and private services, regulation of electronic authentication, electronic evidence and information security, and private (international) law aspects of electronic commerce. She can be reached at s.vdrhof@uvt.nl.
- 18. the strange returnof gyges’ ring: an introduction Book II of Plato’s Republic tells the story of a Lydian shepherd who stumbles upon the ancient Ring of Gyges while minding his flock. Fiddling with the ring one day, the shepherd discovers its magical power to render him invisible. As the story goes, the protagonist uses his newly found power to gain secret access to the castle where he ultimately kills the king and overthrows the kingdom. Fundamentally, the ring provides the shepherd with an unusual opportunity to move through the halls of power without being tied to his public identity or his personal history. It also provided Plato with a narrative device to address a classic question known to philosophers as the “immoralist’s challenge”: why be moral if one can act otherwise with impunity? the network society In a network society—where key social structures and activities are organized around electronically processed information networks—this question ceases to be the luxury of an ancient philosopher’s thought experiments. With the estab- lishment of a global telecommunications network, the immoralist’s challenge is no longer premised on mythology. The advent of the World Wide Web in the 1990s enabled everyone with access to a computer and modem to become unknown, and in some cases invisible, in public spaces—to communicate, emote, act, and interact with relative anonymity. Indeed, this may even have granted users more power than did Gyges’ Ring, because the impact of what one could say or do online was no longer limited by physical proximity or corporeality. The end-to-end architecture of the Web’s Transmission Control Protocol, for example, facilitated unidentified, one-to-many interactions at a distance. As the now-famous cartoon framed the popular culture of the early 1990s, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”1 Although this cartoon resonated deeply on various levels, at the level of architecture it reflected the simple fact that the Internet’s original protocols did not require people to identify themselves, enabling them to play with their identities—to represent themselves however they wished. In those heady days bookmarking the end of the previous millennium, the rather strange and abrupt advent of Gyges’ Ring 2.0 was by no means an unwel- come event. Network technologies fostered new social interactions of various sorts and provided unprecedented opportunities for individuals to share their 1. Peter Steiner, “On the Internet, Nobody Knows You’re a Dog,” The New Yorker (July 5, 1993), http://www.cartoonbank.com/item/22230.
- 19. xxiv the strangereturn of gyges’ ring: an introduction thoughts and ideas en masse. Among other things, the Internet permitted robust political speech in hostile environments, allowing its users to say and do things that they might never have dared to say or do in places where their identity was more rigidly constrained by the relationships of power that bracket their experi- ence of freedom. Anonymous browsers and messaging applications promoted frank discussion by employees in oppressive workplaces and created similar opportunities for others stifled by various forms of social stigma. Likewise, new cryptographic techniques promised to preserve personal privacy by empowering individuals to make careful and informed decisions about how, when, and with whom they would share their thoughts or their personal information. At the same time, many of these new information technologies created opportunities to disrupt and resist the legal framework that protects persons and property. Succumbing to the immoralist’s challenge, there were those who exploited the network to defraud, defame, and harass; to destroy property; to distribute harmful or illegal content; and to undermine national security. In parallel with both of these developments, we have witnessed the proliferation of various security measures in the public and private sectors designed to under- mine the “ID-free” protocols of the original network. New methods of authentica- tion, verification, and surveillance have increasingly allowed persons and things to be digitally or biometrically identified, tagged, tracked, and monitored in real time and in formats that can be captured, archived, and retrieved indefinitely. More recently, given the increasing popularity of social network sites and the pervasive- ness of interactive media used to cultivate user-generated content, the ability of governments, not to mention the proliferating international data brokerage indus- tries that feed them, to collect, use, and disclose personal information about every- one on the network is increasing logarithmically. This phenomenon is further exacerbated by corporate and government imperatives to create and maintain large- scale information infrastructures to generate profit and increase efficiencies. In this new world of ubiquitous handheld recording devices, personal webcams, interconnected closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras, radio frequency identifica- tion (RFID) tags, smart cards, global satellite positioning systems, HTTP cookies, digital rights management systems, biometric scanners, and DNA sequencers, the space for private, unidentified, or unauthenticated activity is rapidly shrinking. Many worry that the regulatory responses to the real and perceived threats posed by Gyges’ Ring have already profoundly challenged our fundamental commitments to privacy, autonomy, equality, security of the person, free speech, free movement, and free association. Add in the shifting emphasis in recent years toward public safety and national security, and network technologies appear to be evolving in a manner that is transforming the structures of our communications systems from architectures of freedom to architectures of control. Are we shifting away from the original design of the network, from spaces where anonymity and privacy were once the default position to spaces where nearly every human transaction is subject to tracking, monitoring, and the possibility of authentication and identification?
- 20. the strange returnof gyges’ ring: an introduction xxv The ability or inability to maintain privacy, construct our own identities, control the use of our identifiers, decide for ourselves what is known about us, and, in some cases, disconnect our actions from our identifiers will ultimately have profound implications for individual and group behavior. It will affect the extent to which people, corporations, and governments choose to engage in global electronic commerce, social media, and other important features of the network society. It will affect the way that we think of ourselves, the way we choose to express ourselves, the way that we make moral decisions, and our will- ingness and ability to fully participate in political processes. Yet our current philosophical, social, and political understandings of the impact and importance of privacy, identity, and anonymity in a network society are simplistic and poorly developed, as is our understanding of the broader social impact of emerging network technologies on existing legal, ethical, regulatory, and social structures. This book investigates these issues from a number of North American and European perspectives. Our joint examination is structured around three core organizing themes: (1) privacy, (2) identity, and (3) anonymity. privacy The jurist Hyman Gross once described privacy as a concept “infected with per- nicious ambiguities.”2 More recently, Canadian Supreme Court Justice Ian Binnie expressed a related worry, opining that “privacy is protean.”3 The judge’s metaphor is rather telling when one recalls that Proteus was a shape-shifter who would transform in order to avoid answering questions about the future. Perhaps U.S. novelist Jonathan Franzen had something similar in mind when he charac- terized privacy as the “Cheshire cat of values.”4 One wonders whether privacy will suffer the same fate as Lewis Carroll’s enigmatic feline—all smile and no cat. Certainly, that is what Larry Ellison seems to think. Ellison is the CEO of Oracle Corporation and the fourteenth richest person alive. In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, Ellison offered to donate to the U.S. Government software that would enable a national identification database, boldly stating in 2004 that “The privacy you’re concerned about is largely an illusion. All you have to give up is your illusions, not any of your privacy.”5 As someone who understands the power of network databases to profile people right down to their skivvies 2. Hyman Gross, “The Concept of Privacy,” N.Y.U.L. REV. 43 (1967): 34–35. 3. R. v Tessling, 2004 SCC 67, [2004] 3 S.C.R. 432, per Justice Binnie, at 25. 4. Jonathan Franzen, How to Be Alone: Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003), 42. 5. Larry Ellison, quoted in L. Gordon Crovitz, “Privacy? We Got Over It” The Wall Street Journal, A11, August 25, 2008, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121962391804567765. html?mod=rss_opinion_main.
- 21. xxvi the strangereturn of gyges’ ring: an introduction (and not only to provide desirable recommendations for a better brand!), Ellison’s view of the future of privacy is bleak. Indeed, many if not most contemporary discussions of privacy are about its erosion in the face of new and emerging technologies. Ellison was, in fact, merely reiterating a sentiment that had already been expressed some five years earlier by his counterpart at Sun Microsystems, Scott McNealy, who advised a group of journalists gathered to learn about Sun’s data-sharing software: “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.”6 To turn Hyman Gross’s eloquent quotation on its head—the Ellison/McNealy conception of privacy is infected with ambiguous perniciousness. It disingenu- ously—or perhaps even malevolently—equivocates between two rather different notions of privacy in order to achieve a self-interested outcome: it starts with a descriptive account of privacy as the level of control an individual enjoys over her or his personal information and then draws a prescriptive conclusion that, because new technologies will undermine the possibility of personal control, we therefore ought not to expect any privacy. Of course, the privacy that many of us expect is not contingent upon or conditioned by the existence or prevalence of any given technology. Privacy is a normative concept that reflects a deeply held set of values that predates and is not rendered irrelevant by the network society. To think otherwise is to commit what philosopher G. E. Moore called the “naturalistic fallacy,”7 or as Lawrence Lessig has restyled it, the “is-ism”: The mistake of confusing how something is with how it must be. There is certainly a way that cyberspace is. But how cyberspace is is not how cyber- space has to be. There is no single way that the net has to be; no single architecture that defines the nature of the net. The possible architectures of something that we would call “the net” are many, and the character of life within those different architectures are [sic] diverse.8 Although the “character of life” of privacy has, without question, become more diverse in light of technologies of both the privacy-diminishing and privacy- preserving variety, the approach adopted in this book is to understand privacy as a normative concept. In this approach, the existence of privacy rights will not simply depend on whether our current technological infrastructure has reshaped our privacy expectations in the descriptive sense. It is not a like-it-or-lump-it proposition. At the same time, it is recognized that the meaning, importance, impact, and implementation of privacy may need to evolve alongside the emer- genceofnewtechnologies.Howprivacyoughttobeunderstood—andfostered—in 6. Ibid., Scott McNealy quote. 7. G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903). 8. Lawrence Lessig, Code: And Other Laws of Cyberspace, Version 2.0 (New York: Basic Books, 2006): 32.
- 22. the strange returnof gyges’ ring: an introduction xxvii a network society certainly requires an appreciation of and reaction to new and emerging network technologies and their role in society. Given that the currency of the network society is information, it is not totally surprising that privacy rights have more recently been recharacterized by courts as a kind of “informational self-determination.”9 Drawing on Alan Westin’s classic definition of informational privacy as “the claim of individuals, groups, or institutions to determine for themselves when, how, and to what extent informa- tion about them is communicated to others,”10 many jurisdictions have adopted fair information practice principles11 as the basis for data protection regimes.12 These principles and the laws that support them are not a panacea, as they have been developed and implemented on the basis of an unhappy compromise between those who view privacy as a fundamental human right and those who view it as an economic right.13 From one perspective, these laws aim to protect privacy, autonomy, and dignity interests. From another, they are the lowest common denominator of fairness in the information trade. Among other things, it is thought that fair information practice principles have the potential to be technology neutral, meaning that they apply to any and all technologies so that privacy laws do not have to be rewritten each time a new privacy-implicating technology comes along. A number of chapters in this book challenge that view. Our examination of privacy in Part I of this book begins with the very fulcrum of the fair information practice principles—the doctrine of consent. Consent is often seen as the legal proxy for autonomous choice and is therefore anchored in the traditional paradigm of the classical liberal individual, which is typically thought to provide privacy’s safest harbor. As an act of ongoing agency, consent can also function as a gatekeeper for the collection, use, and disclosure of per- sonal information. As several of our chapters demonstrate, however, consent can also be manipulated, and reliance on it can generate unintended conse- quences in and outside of privacy law. Consequently, we devote several chapters 9. Known in German as “Informationelles selbstbestimmung,” this expression was first used jurisprudentially in Volkszählungsurteil vom 15. Dezember 1983, BVerfGE 65, 1, German Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgerichts) 1983. 10. Alan Westin, Privacy and Freedom (New York: Atheneum, 1967): 7. 11. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Guidelines Governing theProtectionofPrivacyandTransborderFlowsofPersonalData,AnnextotheRecommendation of the Council of 23 September 1980, http://www.oecd.org/document/18/0,3343,en_2649_ 34255_1815186_1_1_1_1,00.html. 12. Article 29 of Directive EC, Council Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, [1995] O.J. L. 281: 31; Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, S.C. 2000, c. 5. 13. Canada. House of Commons Standing Committee on Human Rights and the Status of Persons with Disabilities. 35th Parliament, 2nd Session. Privacy: Where Do We Draw the Line? (Ottawa: Public Works and Government Services Canada, 1997).
- 23. xxviii the strangereturn of gyges’ ring: an introduction to interrogations of the extent to which the control/consent model is a sufficient safeguard for privacy in a network society. Does privacy live on liberal individualism alone? Some of our chapters seek out ways of illuminating privacy in light of other cherished collective values such as equality and security. Although the usual temptation is to understand these values as being in conflict with privacy, our approach in this book casts privacy as complementary to and in some cases symbiotic with these other important social values. Privacy does not stand alone. It is nested in a number of social relationships and is itself related to other important concepts, such as identity and anonymity. We turn to those concepts in Parts II and III of the book. identity Although lofty judicial conceptions of privacy such as “informational self- determination” set important normative standards, the traditional notion of a pure, disembodied, and atomistic self, capable of making perfectly rational and isolated choices in order to assert complete control over personal information, is not a particularly helpful fiction in a network society. If a fiction there must be, one that is perhaps more worthy of consideration is the idea of identity as a theft of the self. Who we are in the world and how we are identified is, at best, a con- cession. Aspects of our identities are chosen, others assigned, and still others accidentally accrued. Sometimes they are concealed at our discretion, other times they are revealed against our will. Identity formation and disclosure are both complex social negotiations, and in the context of the network society, it is not usually the individual who holds the bargaining power. Because the network society is to a large extent premised on mediated interac- tion, who we are (and who we say we are) is not a self-authenticating proposition in the same way that it might be if we were close kin or even if we were merely standing in physical proximity to one another. Although we can be relatively certain that it is not a canine on the other end of an IM chat, the identity of the entity at the other end of a transaction may be entirely ambiguous. Is it a business partner, an imposter, or an automated software bot? The same could be true of someone seeking to cross an international border, order an expensive product online, or fly an airplane—assuming she or he is able to spoof the appropriate credentials or identifiers. As we saw in the extreme example of the shepherd in possession of Gyges’ Ring, those who are able to obfus- cate their identities sometimes take the opportunity to act with limited account- ability. This is one of the reasons why network architects and social policymakers have become quite concerned with issues of identity and identification. However, it is important to recognize that identification techniques can preserve or diminish privacy. Their basic function is to make at least some aspects of an unknown entity known by mapping it to a knowable attribute.
- 24. the strange returnof gyges’ ring: an introduction xxix An identification technique is more likely to be privacy preserving if it takes a minimalist approach with respect to those attributes that are to become known. For example, an automated highway toll system may need to authenticate certain attributes associated with a car or driver in order to appropriately debit an account for the cost of the toll. But to do so, it need not identify the car, the driver, the passengers, or for that matter the ultimate destination of the vehicle. Instead, anonymous digital credentials14 could be assigned that would allow cryptographic tokens to be exchanged through a network in order to prove statements about them and their relationships with the relevant organization(s) without any need to identify the drivers or passengers themselves. Electronic voting systems can do the same thing. In Part II of the book we explore these issues by investigating different philo- sophical notions of identity and discussing how those differences matter. We also address the role of identity and identification in achieving personal and public safety. We consider whether a focus on the protection of “heroic” cowboys who refuse to reveal their identities in defiance of orders to do so by law enforce- ment officers risks more harm than good, and whether unilateral decisions by the State to mandate control over the identities of heroic sexually assaulted women as a protective measure risk less good than harm. We examine the inter- action of self and other in the construction of identity and demonstrate in several chapters why discussions of privacy and identity cannot easily be disentangled from broader discussions about power, gender, difference, and discrimination. We also examine the ways in which identity formation and identification can be enabled or disabled by various technologies. A number of technologies that we discuss—data-mining, automation, ID cards, ubiquitous computing, biomet- rics, and human-implantable RFID—have potential narrowing effects, reducing who we are to how we can be counted, kept track of, or marketed to. Other tech- nologies under investigation in this book—mix networks and data obfuscation technologies—can be tools for social resistance used to undermine identification and the collection of personal information, returning us to where our story began. anonymity We end in Part III with a comparative investigation of the law’s response to the renaissance of anonymity. Riffing on Andy Warhol’s best known turn of phrase, an internationally (un)known British street artist living under the pseudonym “Banksy”15 produced an installation with words on a retro-looking pink screen 14. David Chaum, “Achieving Electronic Privacy,” Scientific America (August 1992): 96–101; Stefan A. Brands, Rethinking Public Key Infrastructures and Digital Certificates: Building in Privacy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000). 15. Banksy, “By Banksy,” http://www.banksy.co.uk/- (accessed September 10, 2008).
- 25. xxx the strangereturn of gyges’ ring: an introduction that say, “In the future, everyone will have their 15 minutes of anonymity.”16 Was this a comment on the erosion of privacy in light of future technology? Or was it a reflection of Banksy’s own experience regarding the challenges of living life under a pseudonym in a network society? Whereas Warhol’s “15 minutes of fame” recognized the fleeting nature of celebrity and public attention, Banksy’s “15 minutes of anonymity” recognizes the long-lasting nature of information ubiquity and data retention. Although privacy and anonymity are related concepts, it is important to realize that they are not the same thing. There are those who think that anonymity is the key to privacy. The intuition is that a privacy breach cannot occur unless the information collected, used, or disclosed about an individual is associated with that individual’s identity. Many anonymizing technologies exploit this notion, allowing people to control their personal information by obfuscating their identities. Interestingly, the same basic thinking underlies most data protection regimes, which one way or another link privacy protection to an identifiable individual. According to this approach, it does not matter if we collect, use, or disclose infor- mation, attributes, or events about people so long as the information cannot be (easily) associated with them. Although anonymity, in some cases, enables privacy, it certainly does not guarantee it. As Bruce Schneier has pointed out17 and as any recovering alcoholic knows all too well, even if Alcoholics Anonymous does not require you to show ID or to use your real name, the meetings are anything but private. Anonymity in public is quite difficult to achieve. The fact that perceived anonymity in public became more easily achieved through the end-to-end architecture of the Net is part of what has made the Internet such a big deal, creating a renaissance in anonymity studies not to mention new markets for the emerging field of identity management. The AA example illustrates another crucial point about anonym- ity. Although there is a relationship between anonymity and invisibility, they are not the same thing. Though Gyges’ Ring unhinged the link between the shep- herd’s identity and his actions, the magic of the ring18 was not merely in enabling him to act anonymously (and therefore without accountability): the real magic was his ability to act invisibly. As some leading academics have recently come to 16. Banksy, interviewed by Shepard Fairey in “Banksy,” Swindle Magazine, no. 8 (2008), http://swindlemagazine.com/issue08/banksy/ (accessed September 10, 2008). 17. Bruce Schneier, “Lesson From Tor Hack: Anonymity and Privacy Aren’t the Same,” Wired (September 20, 2007), http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/ securitymatters/2007/09/security_matters_0920?currentPage=2 (accessed September 10, 2008). 18. Arthur C. Clarke’s famous third law states, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” See Arthur C. Clarke, http://www.quotationspage.com/ quotes/Arthur_C._Clarke/, Profiles of the Future; An Inquiry Into the Limits of the Possible (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1971).
- 26. Other documents randomlyhave different content
- 27. "Uncle Francis!" hecried; "Uncle Francis!" The notes of the flute wabbled and ceased. "Yes, my dearest fellow," came cheerfully from above. "I am so glad you are so much better! May I come up and see you?" "By all means, by all means. I was just on the point of sending Sanders down to see if you would." Harry went up the stairs three at a time, and fairly danced down the corridor. Sanders, faithful and foxlike, was outside, his hand on the latch. "You will be very careful, my lord," he said. "We mustn't have Mr. Francis agitated again." "Of course not," said Harry, and was admitted. Mr. Francis was lying high in bed, propped up on pillows. The remains of his breakfast, including a hot dish, of which no part remained, stood on a side table; on his bed lay the case of the beloved flute. "Ah, my dear boy!" he cried, "I owe you a thousand and one apologies for my conduct last night. Sanders tells me I gave you a terrible fright. You must think no more of it, you must promise me to think no more of it, Harry. I have had such seizures many times before, and of late, thank God, they have become much rarer. I had not told you about them on purpose. I did not see the use of telling you." "Dear Uncle Francis, it is a relief to find you so well," said Harry. "Sanders told me last night that he knew how to deal with these attacks, which was a little comfort. But I insist on your seeing a really first-rate doctor from town." Mr. Francis shook his head. "Quite useless, dear Harry;" he said, "though it is like you to suggest it. Before now I have seen an excellent man on the subject. It is true
- 28. that the attackitself is dangerous, but when it passes off it passes off altogether, and during it Sanders knows very well what to do. Besides, in all ordinary probability, it will not recur. But now, my dear boy, as you are here, I will say something I have got to say at once, and get it off my mind." Harry held up his hand. "If it will agitate you in the least degree, Uncle Francis," he said, "I will not hear it. Unless you can promise me that it will not, you open your mouth and I leave the room." "It will not, it will not," said the old man; "I give you my word upon it. It is this: That moment last night when you told me what you told me was the happiest moment I have had for years. What induced my wretched old cab horse of a constitution to play that trick I can not imagine. The news was a shock to me, I suppose—ah! certainly it was a shock, but of pure joy. And I wanted to tell you this at once, because I was afraid, you foolish, unselfish fellow, that you might blame yourself for having told me; that you might think it would pain or injure me to speak of it again. You might even have been intending to tell Miss Aylwin that you must revoke your invitation. Was it not so, Harry?" and he waited for an answer. Harry was sitting on the window sill playing with a tendril of intruding rose, and his profile was dark against the radiance of the sky outside. But when on the pause he turned and went across to the bedside, Mr. Francis was amazed, for his face seemed, like Moses's, to have drunk of some splendour, and to be visibly giving it out. He bent over the bed, leaning on it with both hands. "Ah! how could I do anything else?" he cried. "I could not bear to be so happy at the cost of your suffering. But now, oh, now——" And he stopped, for he saw that he had told his secret, and there was no more to say. Mr. Francis, seeing that the lad did not go on with the sentence, the gist of which was so clear, said nothing to press him, for he understood, and turned from the seriousness of the subject.
- 29. "So that issettled," he said, "and they are coming, you tell me, at the end of the month. That is why you want the box hedge cut, you rascal. You are afraid of the ladies being frightened. I almost suspected something of the kind. And now, my dear boy, you must leave me. I shall get up at once and be down in half an hour. Ah, my dear Harry, my dear Harry!" and he grasped the hand long and firmly. Harry left him without more words, and strolled out again into the sunlight, which had recaptured all its early brilliance. Had ever a man been so ready and eager to spoil his own happiness, he wondered. Half an hour ago he had blackened the world by his utterly unfounded fears, all built on a fabric of nothingness, and in a moment reared to such a height that they had blotted the very sun from the sky, and like a vampire sucked the beauty from all that was fair. A thought had built them, a word now had dispelled them. He went round to the front of the house, where he found a gardener busy among the flower beds, and they went together to examine the great hedge. It would be a week's work, the man said, to restore it to its proper shape, and Harry answering that it must therefore be begun without delay, he went off after a ladder and pruning tools. Then, poking idly at its compacted wall with his stick as he walked along it, Harry found that after overcoming the first resistance, the stick seemed to penetrate into emptiness, though the whole hedge could not have been less than six or eight feet thick. This presented points of interest, and he walked up to the end, far away from the house, and, pushing through a belt of trees into which the hedge ran, proceeded to examine it from the other side. Here, at once, he found the key to this strange thing, for, half overgrown with young shoots, stood an opening some five feet high, leading into the centre of the hedge, down which ran a long passage. More correctly speaking, indeed, the hedge was not one, but two, planted some three feet apart, and this corridor of gloomy green lights led straight down it toward the house. At the far end, again, was a similar half- overgrown door, coming out of which one turned the corner of the
- 30. hedge and emergedon to the gravel sweep close by the house, immediately below the windows of the gun room. To Harry there was something mysterious and delightful about this discovery, which gave him a keen, childlike sense of pleasure. To judge from the growth over the entrances to the passage, it must have been long undiscovered, and he determined to ask his uncle whether he remembered it. Then, suddenly and unreasonably, he changed his mind; the charm of this mystery would be gone if he shared it with another, even if he suspected that another already knew it, and, smiling at himself for his childish secrecy and reserve, he strolled back again to meet the gardener to whom he had given orders to clip it. There must be no possibility of his discovery of the secret doors; the box hedge should be clipped only with a view to the road; the other side should not be touched—a whited sepulchre. These orders given, he went back to the house to wait for the appearance of Mr. Francis. The latter soon came downstairs, with a great Panama hat on his head, round which was tacked a gaudy ribbon; he hummed a cheerful little tune as he came. "Ah, Harry!" he said, "I did not mean you to wait in for me on this glorious morning, for I think I will not go fast or far. Long-limbed, lazy fellow," he said, looking at him as he sat in the low chair. Harry got up, stretching his long limbs. "Lazy I am not," he said; "I have done a world full of things this morning. I have bathed, I have breakfasted, I have listened to your music, I have given a hundred orders to the gardeners, at least I gave one, and I have read the papers. Where shall we go, Uncle Francis?" "Where you please, as long as we go together, and you will consent to go slowly and talk to me. I am a little shaky still, I find, now that I try my legs; but, Harry, there is a lightness about my heart from your news of last night."
- 31. "It is goodto hear you say that, for I can not convey to you how I looked forward to telling you. And you feel, you really feel, all you said to me?" Mr. Francis paused. "All, all," he said earnestly. "The past has been expunged with a word. That burden which so long I have carried about is gone, like the burden of Christian's. Ah! you do not know what it was! But now, if she—Miss Aylwin—believed it, she would not come within a mile of me; if her mother still believed it, she would not let her, and Lady Oxted would not let her. A hard, strange woman, was Mrs. Aylwin, Harry. I told you, I remember, what passed between us. But it is over, over. Yes, yes, the healing comes late, and the recompense; but it comes—it has come." "I do not know Mrs. Aylwin," said Harry. "I have never ever seen her. But I can answer for it that Miss Aylwin believes utterly and entirely in your innocence." "How is that? How is that?" asked Mr. Francis. "She told me so herself," said Harry. "How strange it all is, and how it all works together! I told her, you must know, the first evening I met her, about the Luck, and last week, when I was down with the Oxteds, I told her, Uncle Francis, about the awful troubles you had been through, particularly—particularly that one. At the moment I did not know that she was in any way connected with the Harmsworths. I knew of her only what I had seen of her. And then, in the middle, she stopped me, saying she knew all, saying also that she entirely believed in you." Mr. Francis walked on a few steps in silence, and Harry spoke again. "Perhaps I ought not to have told her," he said, "but the Luck held. She was the right person, you see. And somehow, you will agree with me, I think, when you see her, she is a person to whom it is natural to tell things. She is so sympathetic—I have no words—so eager to know what interests and is important to her friends. Yes, already I count myself a friend of hers."
- 32. "Then her motherhad not told her all?" asked Mr. Francis, with the air of one deliberating. "Not all; not your name. She had no idea that she was talking to the nephew of the man about whom she had heard from her mother." Mr. Francis quickened his pace, like a man who has made up his mind. "You did quite right to tell her, Harry," he said, "quite right. It would come to her better from you than from any one else. Also, it is far better that she should know before she came here, and before you get to know each other better. I have always a dread of the chance word, so dear to novelists, which leads to suspicion or revelations. How intolerable the fear of that would have been! We should all have been in a false position. But now she knows; we have no longer any fear as to how she may take the knowledge; and thank you, dear Harry, for telling her." The next two or three days passed quietly and busily. There were many questions of farm and sport to be gone into, many balancings of expenditure and income to be adjusted, and their talk, at any rate, if not their more secret thoughts, was spread over a hundred necessary but superficial channels. Among such topics were a host of businesses for which Mr. Francis required Harry's sanction before he put them in hand; a long section of park paling required repair, some design of planting must be constructed in order to replace the older trees in the park, against the time that decay and rending should threaten them. All these things and many more, so submitted Mr. Francis, were desirable, but it would be well if Harry looked at certain tables of estimates which he had caused to be drawn up before he decided, as he was inclined to do, that everything his uncle recommended should be done without delay. Items, inconsiderable singly, he would find, ran to a surprising total when taken together, and he must mention a definite sum which he was prepared to spend, say, before the end of the year, on outdoor improvements. Things in the house, too, required careful consideration; the installation of the electric light, for instance,
- 33. would run awaywith no negligible sum. How did Harry rank the urgency of indoor luxuries with regard to outdoor improvements? If he intended to entertain at all extensively during the next winter, he would no doubt be inclined to give precedence to affairs under the roof; if not, there were things out of doors which could be mended now at a less cost than their completer repair six months hence would require. Mr. Francis put these things to his nephew with great lucidity and patient impartiality, and Harry, heavily frowning, would wrestle with figures that continually tripped and threw him, and in his mind label all these things as sordid. But the money which he could immediately afford to spend on the house and place was limited, and he had the sense to apply himself to the balancing. At length, after an ink-stained and arithmetical morning, he threw down his pen. "Electric light throughout, Uncle Francis," he said, "and hot water laid on upstairs. There is the ultimatum. The house is more behindhand than the park. Therefore the house first." "You see exactly what that will come to?" asked Mr. Francis. "Yes; according to the estimates you have given me, I can afford so much, and the park palings may go to the deuce. One does not live in the park palings, and, since you mention it, I daresay I shall ask people here a good deal next winter. Let's see; this is mid-June. Let them begin as soon as Lady Oxted and Miss Aylwin have been, and they should be out of the house again by October; though the British workman always takes a longer lease than one expects. I shall want to be here in October. Oh, I wish it were October. Pheasant-shooting, you know," he added, in a tone of apology. He tore up some sheets of figures, then looked up at his uncle. "You will like to have people here, will you not, Uncle Francis?" he asked. "There shall be young people for you to play with, and old people for me to talk to. And we'll shoot, and, oh, lots of things." He got off his chair, stretching himself slowly and luxuriously.
- 34. "Thank goodness, Ihave made up my mind," he said. "I thought I was never going to. Come out for a stroll before lunch." Whether it was that the multiplicity of these arithmetical concerns came between the two, or, as Harry sometimes fancied, his uncle was not disposed to return to that intimacy of talk which had followed his strange seizure on the first night, did not certainly appear. The upshot, however, admitted of no misunderstanding, and, engrossed in these subjects, the two did not renew their conversation about Miss Aylwin and all that bordered there. As far as concerned his own part, Harry did not care to speak of what was so sacred to him, and so near and far; she was the subject for tremulous, solitary visions; to discuss was impossible, and to trespass near that ground was to make him silent and awkward. No great deal of intuition was necessary on Mr. Francis's part to understand this, and he also gave a wide berth to possible embarrassments. The Sunday afternoon following, Harry left again for London, for he was dining out that night. He said good-bye to his uncle immediately after lunch, for at the country church there was a children's service which Mr. Francis had to attend, since he was in charge of a certain section of the congregation—those children, in fact, who attended his class in the village Sunday school.
- 35. CHAPTER XI MR. FRANCISSEES HIS DOCTOR Harry had held long sessions in his mind as to whether he should or should not ask other people to Vail to meet Lady Oxted and Miss Aylwin at the end of the month. It was but a thin hospitality, he was afraid, to bring two ladies down to Wiltshire to spend a country Sunday, and provide for their entertainment only the society of himself and his uncle; and this fear gradually deepening to certainty, he hurriedly asked four or five other guests, only two days before the projected visit, in revolt all the time at the obligations of a host. All of these, however, as was not unnatural at this fullest time in the year, were otherwise engaged, and he opened each letter of regret with increasing satisfaction. He had been balked in the prosecution of his duty; it was no use at this late hour trying again. There were also other reasons against having a party. His uncle's health, for instance, so he wrote to him, had not been very good since his attack. He had been left rather weak and shattered by it, and though his letter was full of that zest and cheerfulness which was so habitual a characteristic with him, Harry felt that it might be better, particularly since his first meeting with Miss Aylwin would of necessity be somewhat of an emotional strain to him, not to tax him further, either with the arrangements incidental to a larger party or with their entertainment. These dutiful considerations, it must be confessed, though perfectly genuine, all led down the paths of his own desires, for it was just the enforced intimacy of a partie carrée in the country from which he promised himself such an exquisite pleasure. With a dozen people in the house, his time would not be his own; he would have to look after people, make himself agreeable to everybody, and be continually burdened with the hundred petty
- 36. cares of ahost. But, the way things were, all that Sunday they would be together, if not in fours then in pairs, and the number of possible combinations of four people in pairs he could see at once was charmingly limited. But, though to him personally the refusal of others to come to his feast was not an occasion of regret, an excuse to the two ladies as to the meagreness of the entertainment he was providing for them, however faltering and insincere, was still required. This he made with a marvellously radiant face, a few evenings before their visit, as he sat with them in Lady Oxted's box at the opera. "I have to make a confession," he said, drawing his chair up at the end of the second act of Lohengrin, "and, as you are both so delighted with the music, I will do so now, in the hopes that you may let me off easily. There is absolutely no one coming to meet you at Vail; there will be my Uncle Francis and myself, and that is all." Evie turned to him. "That is charming of you," she said, "and you have paid us a compliment. It is nothing to be asked as merely one of a crowd, but your asking us alone shows that you don't expect to get bored with us. Make your courtesy, Aunt Violet!" "But there's the Luck," said Lady Oxted. "I gathered that the Luck was the main object of our expedition, though how it was going to amuse us I don't know, any more than I know how Dr. Nansen expected the north pole to amuse him. And why, if you wanted to see it, Evie, Harry could not send for it by parcel post, I never quite grasped." "Or luggage train, unregistered," said Evie. "Why did you not give it to the first tramp you met, Lord Vail, and ask him to take it carefully to London, for it was of some value, and leave it at a house in Grosvenor Square the number of which you had forgotten? How stupid of you not to think of that! And did you see the Luck when you were down last week?" "Yes; it came to dinner every night. I used to drink its health."
- 37. "Good gracious! Ishall have to take my very smartest things," cried Evie. "Fancy having to dress up to the Luck every evening!" "Give it up, dear, give it up," said Lady Oxted. "The Luck will certainly make you look shabby, whatever you wear. Oh! those nursery rhymes!—Ah! here's Bob.—Bob, what can have made you come to the opera?" Lord Oxted took his seat, and gazed round the house before replying. "I think it was your absolute certainty that I should not," he replied. "I delight in confuting the infallible; for you are an infallible, Violet. It is not your fault; you can not help it." Lady Oxted laughed. "My poor man," she said, "how shallow you must be not to have seen that I only said that in order to make you come!" "I thought of that," he said, "but rejected the suspicion as unworthy. You laid claim, very unconvincingly I allow, the other day to a passion for truth and honour. Indeed, I gave you the benefit of a doubt which never existed.—And you all go down to Vail on Saturday. I should like to come, only I have not been asked." "No, dear," said Lady Oxted. "I forbade Harry to ask you." "Oh! you didn't," began Harry. "I quite understand," said Lord Oxted; "you refrained from asking me on your own account, and if you had suggested such a thing, my wife would have forbidden you. One grows more and more popular, I find, as the years pass." "Dear Uncle Bob, you are awfully popular with me," said Evie. "Shall I stop and keep you company in London?" "Yes; please do," said he. "But won't it be rather rude to Lord Vail?" "Yes, but he will forgive you," said Lord Oxted.
- 38. "Indeed, I sha'n't,Miss Aylwin," said Harry. "Don't think it. But will you then come to Vail, Lord Oxford? I thought it would be no use asking you." "I may not be popular," said he, "but I have still a certain pride." Here the orchestra poised and plunged headlong into the splendid overture of the third act; and Lady Oxted, whose secret joy was the hope that she might, in the fulness of time, grow to tolerate Wagner by incessant listening to him, glared furiously at the talkers and closed her eyes. Lord Oxted, it was observed by the others, thereupon stole quietly out of the box. The curtain rose with the Wedding March, and that done, and the lovers alone, that exquisite duet began, rising, like the voices of two larks, from height to infinite height of passion, as clear and pure as summer heavens. Then into the soul of that feeblest of heroines began to enter doubt and hesitation, the desire to know what she had promised not to ask grew in the brain, until it made itself words, undermining and unbuilding all that on which love rests. Thereafter, the woman having failed, came tumult and death, the hopeless lovers were left face to face with the ruin that want of trust will bring upon all that is highest, and with the drums and the slow, measured rhythm of despair, the act ended. "The hopeless, idiotic fool of a girl!" remarked Evie, with extreme precision, weighing her words. "Oh! I lose my patience with her." "I thought your tone sounded a little impatient," said Lady Oxted. "A little? Why, if Lohengrin had said he wanted to write a letter, she could have looked round the corner to see that he was not flirting with one of the chorus, and have opened his letter afterward. If there is one thing I despise, it is a suspicious woman." "You must find a great many despicable things in this world," remarked Lady Oxted. "Dear aunt, if you attempt to be cynical, I shall go home in a hansom by myself," said Evie.
- 39. "Do, dear; andHarry and I will follow in the brougham. Do you want to stay for the last act?" "No; I would sooner go away. I am rather tired, and Elsa has put me in a bad temper. Good-bye, Lord Vail, and expect us on Saturday afternoon; please order good weather. It will be enchanting; I am so looking forward to it!" Harry himself went down to Vail on Friday afternoon, for he wished both to satisfy himself that everything was arranged for the comfort of his visitors, and also to meet them himself when they came. The only train he could conveniently catch did not stop at his nearest station, and he telegraphed home that they should meet him at Didcot. This implied a ten-mile drive, and his train being late on arrival, he put the cobs to their best pace in order to reach Vail in time for dinner. Turning quickly and rather recklessly into the lodge gates, he had to pull up sharply in order to avoid collision with one of his own carriages which was driving away from the house. A stable helper not in livery held the reins, and by his side sat a man of dark, spare aspect, a stranger to him. As soon as they had passed, he turned round to the groom who sat behind. "Who was that?" he asked. "I don't know his name, my lord," said he, "but I drove him from the station last Monday. He has been staying with Mr. Francis since then." Harry was conscious of a slight feeling of vexation, arising from several causes. In the first place (and here a sense of his dignity spoke), any guest, either of his or his uncle's, ought to be driven to the station properly, not by a man in a cap and a brown coat. In the second place, though he was delighted that Uncle Francis should ask any friend he chose to stay with him, Harry considered that he ought to have been told. He had received a long letter from his uncle two days ago, in which he went at some length into the details of his days, but made no mention of a guest. In the third place, the
- 40. appearance of theman was somehow grossly and uncomfortably displeasing to him. These things simmered in his mind as he drove up the long avenue, and every now and then a little bubble of resentment, as it were, would break on the surface. He half wondered at himself for the pertinacity with which his mind dwelt on them, and he determined, with a touch of that reserve and secrecy which still lingered in corners and angles of his nature, that if his uncle did not choose of his own initiative to tell him about this man, he would ask no questions, but merely not forget the circumstance. This reticence on his own part, so he told himself, was in no way to be put down to secretiveness, but rather to decency of manners. His uncle might have the Czar of all the Russias, if he chose, to stay with him, and if he did not think fit to mention that autocrat's visit, even though it was in all the daily papers, it would be rude even for his nephew to ask him about it. But he knew, if he faced himself quite honestly, that though good manners were sufficient excuse for the reticence he preferred to employ, secretiveness and nothing else was the reason for it. Certainly he wished that the man had not been so disrelishing to the eye; there was something even sinister about the glance he had got of him. Mr. Francis was in the most cheery and excellent spirits, and delighted to see him. He was employed in spudding plantains from the lawn as the carriage drove up. But, abandoning this homely but useful performance as soon as he heard the wheels on the road, he ran almost to meet him. "Ages, it seems literally ages, since you were here, dear boy!" he said. "And see, Harry, I have not been idle in preparing for our charming visitors. Croquet!" and he pointed to a large deal box that lay underneath the clipped yew hedge. "Templeton and I found the box in a gardener's shed," he said, "and we have been washing and cleaning it up. Ah! what a fascinating game, and how it sets off the ingenuity of the feminine mind! I was a great hand at it once, and I think I can strike the ball still. Come, dear boy, let us get in; it is
- 41. already dinner time.Ah! my flute; it would never do to leave that," and he tripped gaily off to a garden seat near, on which lay the case containing the favourite instrument. It happened that at dinner the same night Mr. Francis passed Harry through a sort of affectionate catechism, asking him to give an exhaustive account of the manner in which he had spent the hours since he left Vail a fortnight ago. Harry complied with his humour, half shy, half proud of the number that had to be laid inside Lady Oxted's door, and when this was finished: "Now it is my turn, Uncle Francis," he said. "Begin at the beginning, and tell me all as fully as I have to you." "Well, dear Harry, if I have not galloped about like you, taking ditch and fence, I have trotted along a very pleasant road," he said. "All the week after you left me I was much employed in writing about estimates and details with regard to the electric light. You must look at those to-morrow; they will be rather more expensive than we had anticipated, unless you have fewer lights of higher power. However, that business was finished, I remember, on Saturday; on Sunday I had my class, and dawdled very contentedly through the day. And all this week I have been busy in little ways—one day will serve for another; at the books all the morning, and in the afternoon pottering about alone, doing a bit of gardener's work here, feeding the pheasants there—and they are getting on capitally—or down at the farm. Then very often a nap before dinner, and a blow on the flute afterward. A sweet, happy, solitary time." The servants had left the room, and as Mr. Francis said these words, he looked closely at Harry, and saw his face, so he thought, harden. The lips were a little compressed, the arch of the eyebrows raised ever so little; something between surprise and a frown contracted them. He had already thought it more than possible that Harry might have met the other trap driving away from the house, and he thought he saw confirmation of it in his face. He sighed. "Ah, Harry," he said, "can you not trust me?"
- 42. Mr. Francis's voicewas soft, almost broken; his blue eyes glistened in the candlelight, but still looking intently at his nephew. And, at the amenity and affection in his tone, the boy's reserve and secretiveness, which he had labelled good manners, utterly broke down. "You have read my thoughts," he said, "and I apologize. But why, why not have told me, Uncle Francis? You could not have thought I should mind your having who you liked here?" Mr. Francis sighed again. "I will tell you now," he said, slightly accentuating the last word. "I did not tell you before; I purposely concealed it now; yes, I even used the word solitary about my life during the last week, in order to save you anxiety." "Anxiety?" asked Harry. "Yes; you met, probably somewhere near the lodge gates, one of your carriages going to the station. A man out of livery drove it; a man of middle age sat by him. He was my doctor, Harry, and he came here on Monday last. I wished"—and his tone was frankness to the core—"I wished to get him out of the house before you came; I did not know you were coming till this afternoon, and I saw he could just catch the train to town. I ordered the carriage to take him instantly, and the man had not time to get into livery. That is all." At once Harry was all compunction and anxiety; he left his chair at the end of the table, and drew it close beside his uncle. "Dear Uncle Francis," he said, "what was his opinion of your health? He was satisfied?" "Fairly well satisfied," said Mr. Francis. "The upshot was that I must live very quietly, and take no great exertion, and guard against quick movements. I might then hope, I might certainly hope, to live several more years yet. At my age, he said, one must not go hurdle- racing. Seventy-three! Well, well, I am getting on for seventy-three!"
- 43. Harry was tongue-tiedwith a sort of vague contrition—for what, he could hardly tell. He had been put in the wrong, but so generously and kindly that he could not resent it. He had had no suspicions of any kind, and his uncle's simple frankness had made him wear the aspect of the suspector. Indeed, where could suspicion look in? Suspicions—what of? The gist of his feeling had been that he should have been told, and here was the considerable reason why he had not—a reason sensible, conclusive, and dictated by thoughtful affections. Yet he felt somehow ashamed of himself, and his shame was too ill-defined for speech. But there was no long pause, for Mr. Francis almost immediately got up from his chair, with a nimbleness of movement which perhaps his doctor would not have liked. "Well! a truce to these sombrenesses, Harry," he said. "Indeed, I am brisk enough yet. Ah, what a pleasure to have you here instead of that excellent, kind, unsociable fellow! I have such a good story for you; let us go to the billiard room; I could not tell you before the servants, though I have had it on the tip of my tongue all the evening. The doctor recommended me billiards after dinner; gentle, slow exercise like that was just the thing, he said. Well, that story ——" Harry rose too. "One word more," he said. "Is your doctor a really first-rate man? You remember, I wanted you to see a good man. What is his name?" "Dr. Godfrey," said Mr. Francis, "32 Half-Moon Street. He is a first- rate man. I have known him since he was a boy."
- 44. CHAPTER XII THE MEETINGIN THE WOOD The two ladies were to arrive about tea time next day, and, as the hour drew on, a lively restlessness got hold of Harry. He could neither sit, nor stand, nor read, but after a paragraph of a page, the meaning of which slipped from his mind even as his eyes hurried over the lines, he would be off on an aimless excursion to the dining room, forget what he had gone about, and return with the same haste to his book. Then he would remember that he wanted the table to-night in the centre of the room, not pushed, as they had been having it, into the window; and there must be a place left for the Luck in the middle of the table. Again he would be off to the dining room; there was the table in the centre of the room, and in the centre of the table a place for the Luck, for he had given twenty repetitions of the order to Templeton, which was exactly twenty repetitions more than were necessary. Harry, in fact, was behaving exactly like the cock sparrow in mating time, strutting before its lady —an instinct in all young males. But there were not enough flowers; there must be more flowers and less silver. How could Dutch silver be ornamental in the neighbourhood of that gorgeous centrepiece, and how, said his heart to him, could the Luck be ornamental, considering who should sit at his table? He went back again to the hall, after giving these directions, where tea was laid. Mr. Francis was out on the lawn; he could see his yellow Panama hat like a large pale flower under the trees; the windows were all open, and the gentle hum of the warm afternoon came languidly in. Suddenly a fuller note began to overscore these noises in gradual crescendo, the crisp gravel grated underneath swift wheels, and next moment he was at the door. And, at sight of the
- 45. girl, all hisMarthalike cares, the Dutch silver, the position of the table, slipped from him. Here was the better part. "Welcome!" he said; "and welcome and welcome!" and he held the girl's hand far longer than a stranger would; and it was not withdrawn. A little added colour shone in her cheeks, and her eyes met his, then fell before them. "So you have not stayed to keep Lord Oxted company," he said. "I can spare him pity.—How are you, Lady Oxted?" "Did you think I should?" asked Evie. "No; I felt quite certain you would not," said Harry, with the assurance which women love. "Do come in; tea is ready." "And I am ready," said Evie. "And this is the hall," continued Harry, as they entered, "where every one does everything. Oh! there is a drawing-room: if you wish we will be grand and go to the drawing-room. I had it made ready; but let us stop here.—Will you pour out tea, Lady Oxted." Lady Oxted took a rapid inventory of the tapestry and portraits. "I rather like drinking tea in a cow shed," she remarked. In a few moments Mr. Francis entered with his usual gay step, and in his hand he carried his large hat. "How long since we met last, Lady Oxted!" he said. "And what a delight to see you here!" "Miss Aylwin, Uncle Francis," said Harry, unceremoniously. The old man turned quickly. "Ah! my dear Miss Aylwin," he said—"my dear Miss Aylwin," and they shook hands. Harry gave a little sigh of relief. Ever since his uncle's attack, a fortnight ago, he had felt in the back of his mind a little uneasiness about this meeting. It seemed he might have spared himself the pains. Nothing could have been simpler or more natural than Mr.
- 46. Francis's manner; yetthe warmth of his hand-shake, the form of words, more intimate than a man would use to a stranger, were admirably chosen—if choice were not a word too full of purpose for so spontaneous a greeting—to at once recognise and obliterate the past. The meeting was, as it were, a scene of reconciliation between two who had never set eyes on each other before, and between whom the horror of their vicarious estrangement would never be mentioned or even be allowed to be present in the mind. And Mr. Francis's words seemed to Harry to meet the situation with peculiar felicity. The old man seated himself near Lady Oxted. "This is an occasion," he said, "and both Harry and I have been greatly occupied with his house-warming. But the weather—there was little warming there to be done; surely we have ordered delightful weather for you. Harry told me that Miss Aylwin wished for a warm day. Indeed, his choice does not seem to me, a poor northerner, a bad one; but Miss Aylwin has perhaps had too much Italian weather to care for our poor imitation." "Lord Vail refused to promise," said Evie; "at least he did not promise anything about the weather. I was afraid he would forget." "Ah! but I told my uncle," said Harry. "He saw about it: you must thank him." Evie was sitting opposite the fireplace, and her eye had been on the picture of old Francis which hung above it. At these words of Harry's she turned to Mr. Francis with a smile, and her mouth half opened for speech. But something arrested the words, and she was silent; and Harry, who had been following every movement of hers, tracing it with the infallible minute intuition of a lover to its desiring thought, guessed that the curious resemblance between the two had struck with a force that for the moment took away speech. But, before the pause was prolonged, she answered. "I do thank you very much," she said. "And have you arranged another day like this for to-morrow?"
- 47. She looked, asshe spoke, out of the open windows and into the glorious sunshine, and Harry rose. "Shall we not go out?" he said. "Uncle Francis will think we do not appreciate his weather if we stop in." Evie rose too. "Yes, let us go out at once," she said. "But let me first put on another hat. I am not in London, and my present hat simply is London. O Lord Vail, I long to look at that picture again, but I won't; I will be very self-denying, for I am sure—I am sure it is the Luck in the corner of it." She put up her hand so as to shield the picture from even an accidental glance. "Will you show me my way?" she asked. "I will be down again in a minute." Harry took her up the big staircase, lit by a skylight, and lying in many angles. "Yes, you have guessed," he said. "It is the Luck: you will see the original to-night at dinner. Did anything else strike you in the picture? Oh, I saw it did." "Yes, a curious false resemblance. I feel sure it is false, for I think that portrait represents not a very pleasant old gentleman. But your uncle, Lord Vail—I never saw such a dear, kind face!" Harry flushed with pleasure. "So now you understand," he said, "what your coming here must mean to him. Ah! this is your maid, is she not? I will wait in the hall for you." The two elder folk had already strolled out, when Harry returned to the hall, a privation which he supported with perfect equanimity, and in a few minutes he and his companion followed. As they crossed the lawn, Harry swept the points of the compass slowly with his stick.
- 48. "Flower garden, kitchengarden, woods, lake, farm, stables," he said. Evie's eye brightened. "Stables, please," she said. "I am of low horsey tastes, you must know, and I was afraid you were not going to mention them. We had the two most heavenly cobs I ever saw to take us from the station." "Yes, Jack and Jill," said Harry. "But not cobs—angels. Did you drive them?" "No, but I longed to. May I, when we go back on Monday?" "Tuesday is their best day," said Harry; "except Wednesday." They chattered their way to the stables, where the two angels were even then at their toilets. "There is not much to show you," said Harry. "There are the cobs that brought you.—Good-evening, Jim." The man who was grooming them looked up, touched his bare head, and without delay went on with the hissing toilet, as a groom should. Evie looked at him keenly, then back to her companion, and at the man again. "Yes, they are beautiful," she said, and as they turned, "is Vail entirely full of doubles?" she asked. Harry smiled, and followed her into the stables of the riding horses. "Jim is more like me than that picture of old Francis is like my uncle," he said. "I really think I shall have to get rid of him. The likeness might be embarrassing." "I wouldn't do that," said Evie. "Our Italian peasants say it is good luck to have a double about." "Good luck for which?" "For both. Really, I never saw such an extraordinary likeness."
- 49. They spent somequarter of an hour looking over the horses, and returned leisurely toward the house, passing it and going on to the lake. The sun was still not yet set, and the glory of the summer evening a thing to wonder at. Earth and sky seemed ready to burst with life and colour; it was as if a new world was imminent to be born, and from the great austere downs drew a breeze that was the breath of life, but dry, unbreathed. Evie appropriated it in open draughts, with head thrown back. "Aunt Violet was quite right, Lord Vail, when she said you should never come to London," she exclaimed. "How rude she was to you that night, and how little you minded! Even now, when I have been here only an hour, I can no longer imagine how one manages to breathe in that stuffy, shut-in air. Winter, too, winter must be delicious here, crisp and bracing." "So it would seem this evening," said Harry, "but you must see it first under a genuine November day. A mist sometimes spreads slowly from the lake, so thick that even I could almost lose my way between it and the house. It does not rise high, and I have often looked from the windows of the second story into perfectly clear air, while if you went out at the front door you would be half drowned in it. Higher up the road again you will be completely above it, and I have seen it lying below as sharply defined as the lake itself, and if you walk down from that wood up there, it is like stepping deeper and deeper into water. A bad one will rise as high as the steps of those two buildings you see to the right of the house, like kiosks, standing on a knoll, under which the road winds in front of the trees." "And the house is all surrounded like an island? What odd buildings! What are they?" "One is a summerhouse; I couldn't now tell you which. We used to have tea in it sometimes, I remember, when I was quite little. The other is the ice house—a horrible place: it used to haunt me. I remember shrieking with terror once when my nurse took me in. It was almost completely dark, and I can hear now the echo one's step
- 50. made; and therewas a great black chasm in the middle of the floor with steps leading down, as I thought, to the uttermost pit. Two chasms I think there were; one was a well. But the big one was that which terrified me, though I dare say it was only ten or twelve feet deep. Things dwindle so amazingly as one grows up! I wish I could see this lake, for instance, as I saw it when I was a child. It used to appear to me as large as the sea seems now; and as for the sluice, it might have been the Iron Gates of the Danube." "I know: things do get smaller," said Evie, "but, after all, this lake and the sluice are not quite insignificant yet. What a splendid rush of water! And I dare say the ice-house chasm is still sufficient to kill any one who falls in. That, after all, is enough for practical purposes. But then, even if they grow smaller, how much more beautiful they become! When you were little, you never saw half the colour or half the shape you see now. The trees were green, the sky was blue, but they gave one very surface impressions to what they give one now." "Oh, I rather believe in the trailing clouds of glory," said Harry. "Then make an effort to disbelieve in them every day," said Evie. "Shades of the prison house begin to grow around the growing boy, do they? What prison house does the man mean, if you please? Why, the world, this beautiful, delightful world. Indeed, we are very fortunate convicts! And Wordsworth called himself a lover of Nature!" she added, with deep scorn. "Certainly the world has been growing more beautiful to me lately," said Harry. "Of course it has. Please remind me that I have to cut my throat without delay if ever you hear me say that the world is growing less beautiful. But just imagine a person who loved Nature talking of the world as a prison house! Who was it said that Wordsworth only found in stones the sermons he had himself tucked under them, to prevent the wind blowing them away?" "I don't know. It sounds like the remark of an unindolent reviewer." Evie laughed.
- 51. "Fancy talking aboutreviewers on an evening like this!" she said. "Oh, there's a Canadian canoe. May we go in it?" The far end of the lake was studded with little islands only a few yards in circumference for the most part, but, as Evie explained, large enough for the purpose. And then, like two children together, they played at red Indians and lay in wait for a swan, and attempted to stalk a moor hen with quite phenomenal ill success. No word of any tender kind was spoken between them; they but laughed over the nonsense of their own creating, but each felt as they landed that in the last hour their intimacy had shot up like the spike of the aloe flower. For when a man and a maid can win back to childhood again, and play like children together, it is certain that no long road lies yet to traverse before they really meet. Lady Oxted was doomed that night to a very considerable dose—a dose for an adult, in fact—of what she had alluded to as nursery rhymes, for the Luck seemed absolutely to fascinate the girl, and Harry, seeing how exclusively it claimed her eyes, more than once reconsidered the promise he had made her to have it to dinner the next evening as well. She would hardly consent to touch it, and Harry had positively to put it into her hands, so that she might read for herself its legend of the elements. They drank their coffee while still at table, and Evie's eye followed the jewel till Templeton had put it into its case. Then, as the last gleam vanished: "I am like the Queen of Sheba," she said, "and there is no more spirit left in me. If you lose the Luck, Lord Vail, you may be quite sure that it is I who have stolen it; and when I am told that two men in plain clothes are waiting in the drawing-room, I shall know what they have come about. Now for some improving conversation about facts and actualities, for Aunt Violet's sake." Sunday afternoon was very hot, and Lady Oxted, Evie, and Harry lounged it away under the shade of the trees on the lawn. Mr. Francis had not been seen since lunch time, but it was clear that he was busy with his favourite diversion, for brisk and mellow blowings on the flute came from the open window of his sitting room. Harry
- 52. had mentioned thistaste of his to the others, and it had been received by Lady Oxted with a short and rather unkind laugh, which had been quite involuntary, and of which she was now slightly ashamed. But Evie had thought the thing pleasant and touching, rather than absurd, and had expressed a hope that he would allow her to play some accompaniments for him after dinner. If Aunt Violet, she added incisively, found the sound disagreeable, no doubt she would go to her own room. Harry was in the normal Sunday afternoon mood, feeble and easily pleased, and the extreme and designed offensiveness of the girl's tone made him begin to giggle hopelessly. Evie thereupon caught the infection, for laughter is more contagious than typhus, and her aunt followed. The hysterical sounds apparently reached Mr. Francis's ears, in some interval between tunes, for in a moment his rosy face and white hair appeared framed in the window, and shortly afterward he came briskly across the grass to them. "It is getting cooler," he said gaily, "and I am going to be very selfish and ask Miss Aylwin to come for a stroll with me. My lazy nephew, I find, has not taken her through the woods, and I insist on her seeing them.—Will you be very indulgent to me, Miss Evie, and accept a devoted though an aged companion?" Evie rose with alacrity. "With the greatest pleasure," she said.—"Are you coming, too, Aunt Violet?" "Not for the wide, wide world," said Lady Oxted, "will I walk one yard!—Harry, stop where you are, and keep me company." The two walkers went up under the knoll on which stood the ice house, talking and laughing in diminuendo. Harry saw Mr. Francis offer the girl his arm for the steep ascent, and it pleased him in some secret fashion to see that, though her light step was clearly in no need of exterior aid, she accepted it. With this in his mind he turned to Lady Oxted.
- 53. "It is agreat success," he said. "They are delighted with each other. Think what it must mean to my uncle!" Lady Oxted stifled a yawn. "Who are delighted?" she asked. Harry pointed at the two figures halfway up the slope. "You knew whom I meant perfectly," he remarked. "I did. I really don't know why I asked. By the way, Harry, I apologize for laughing just now. Your uncle is the most charming and courteous old gentleman. And he is devoted to you. In fact, I got just a little tired of your name yesterday evening before dinner." Harry did not reply; he was still watching the two. They had surmounted the knoll, and in another moment the iron gate leading into the ride through the wood closed behind them, and they passed out of sight among the trees. Mr. Francis was, as has been indicated, very fond of young people, and those who had the pleasure of his acquaintance always found him a delightful companion. He had an intimate knowledge of natural history, and this afternoon, as he walked with the girl, he would now pick some insignificant herb from the grass, with a sentence or two on its notable medicinal qualities, now with a face full of happy radiance hold up his hand while a bird trilled in the bushes in rapt and happy attention. "A goldfinch, Miss Evie," he whispered; "there is no mistaking that note. Let us come very quietly, and perhaps we shall catch sight of the beauty. That lazy nephew of mine," he went on, when they had seen the gleam of the vanishing bird, "he was saying the other day that there were no goldfinches in Wiltshire. I dare say he will join us here soon. He almost always comes up here on Sunday afternoon. It used to be his father's invariable Sunday walk." They strolled quietly along for some half hour, up winding and zigzag paths which would lead them presently to the brae above the wood, and disclose to them, so Mr. Francis said, a most glorious prospect.
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