Chapter 11

Marsham's first feeling, as he advanced into the room, and, looking round him, saw that Diana was alone, was one of acute physical pleasure. The old room with its mingling of color, at once dim and rich; the sunlit garden through the casement windows; the scent of the logs burning on the hearth, and of the hyacinths and narcissus with which the warm air was perfumed; the signs everywhere of a woman's life and charm; all these first impressions leaped upon him, aiding the remembered spell which had recalled him--hot-foot and eager--from London, to this place, on the very first opportunity.

And if her surroundings were poetic, how much more so was the girl-figure itself!--the slender form, the dark head, and that shrinking joy which spoke in her gesture, in the movement she made toward him across the room. She checked it at once, but not before a certain wildness in it had let loose upon him a rush of delight.

"Sir James explained?" he said, as he took her hand.

"Yes. I had no notion you would be here--this week-end."

"Nor had I--till last night. Then an appointment broken down--and--_me voici_!"

"You stay over to-morrow?"

"Of course! But it is absurd that the Feltons should be five miles away!"

She stammered:

"It is a charming ride."

"But too long!--One does not want to lose time."

She was now sitting; and he beside her. Mechanically she had taken up some embroidery--to shield her eyes. He examined the reds and blues of the pattern, the white fingers, the bending cheek. Suddenly, like Sir James Chide or Hugh Roughsedge, he was struck with a sense of change. The Dian look which matched her name, the proud gayety and frankness of it, were somehow muffled and softened. And altogether her aspect was a little frail and weary. The perception brought with it an appeal to the protective strength of the man. What were her cares? Trifling, womanish things! He would make her confess them; and then conjure them away!

"You have your cousin with you?"

"Yes."

"She will make you a long visit?"

"Another week or two, I think."

"You are a believer in family traditions?--But of course you are!"

"Why 'of course'?" Her color had sparkled again, but the laugh was not spontaneous.

"I see that you are in love with even your furthest kinsmen--you must be--being an Imperialist! Now I am frankly bored by my kinsmen--near and far."

"All the same--you ask their help!"

"Oh yes, in war; pure self-interest on both sides."

"You have been preaching this in the House of Commons?"

The teasing had answered. No more veiling of the eyes!

"No--I have made no speeches. Next week, in the Vote of Censure debate, I shall get my chance."

"To talk Little Englandism? Alack!"

The tone was soft--it ended in a sigh.

"Does it really trouble you?"

She was looking down at her work. Her fingers drew the silk out and in--a little at random. She shook her head slightly, without reply.

"I believe it does," he said, gently, still smiling. "Well, when I make my speech, I shall remember that."

She looked up suddenly. Their eyes met full. On her just parted lips the words she had meant to say remained unspoken. Then a murmur of voices from the garden reached them, as though some one approached. Marsham rose.

"Shall we go into the garden? I ought to speak to Robins. How is he getting on?"

Robins was the new head gardener, appointed on Marsham's recommendation.

"Excellently." Diana had also risen. "I will get my hat."

He opened the door for her. Hang those people outside! But for them she would have been already in his arms.

Left to himself, he walked to and fro, restless and smiling. No more self-repression--no more politic delay! The great moment of life--grasped--captured at last! He in his turn understood the Faust-cry--"Linger awhile!--thou art so fair!" Only let him pierce to the heart of it--realize it, covetously, to the full! All the ordinary worldly motives were placated and at rest; due sacrifice had been done to them; they teased no more. Upgathered and rolled away, like storm-winds from the sea, they had left a shining and a festal wave for love to venture on. Let him only yield himself--feel the full swell of the divine force!

He moved to the window, and looked out.

_Birch_!--What on earth brought that creature to Beechcote. His astonishment was great, and perhaps in the depths of his mind there emerged the half-amused perception of a feminine softness and tolerance which masculine judgment must correct. She did not know how precious she was; and that it must not be made too easy for the common world to approach her. All that was picturesque and important, of course, in the lower classes; labor men, Socialists, and the like. But not vulgar half-baked fellows, who meant nothing politically, and must yet be treated like gentlemen. Ah! There were the Roughsedges--the Captain not gone yet?--Sir James and Mrs. Colwood--nice little creature, that companion--they would find some use for her in the future. And on the lower terrace, Alicia Drake, and--that girl? He laughed, amusing himself with the thought of Alicia's plight. Alicia, the arrogant, the fastidious! The odd thing was that she seemed to be absorbed in the conversation that was going on. He saw her pause at the end of the terrace, look round her, and deliberately lead the way down a long grass path, away from the rest of the party. Was the cousin good company, after all?

Diana returned. A broad black hat, and sables which had been her father's last gift to her, provided the slight change in surroundings which pleases the eye and sense of a lover. And as a man brought up in wealth, and himself potentially rich, he found it secretly agreeable that costly things became her. There should be no lack of them in the future.

They stepped out upon the terrace. At sight of them the Roughsedges approached, while Mr. Fred Birch lagged behind to inspect the sundial. After a few words' conversation, Marsham turned resolutely away.

"Miss Mallory wants to show me a new gardener."

The old doctor smiled at his wife. Hugh Roughsedge watched the departing figures. Excellently matched, he must needs admit, in aspect and in height. Was it about to happen?--or had it already happened? He braced himself, soldierlike, to the inevitable.

"You know Mr. Birch," said Diana to her companion, as they descended to the lower terrace, and passed not very far from that gentleman.

"I just know him," said Marsham, carelessly, and bestowed a nod in the direction of the solicitor.

"Had he not something to do with your election?" said Diana, astonished.

"My election?" cried Marsham. Then he laughed. "I suppose he has been drawing the long bow, as usual. Am I impertinent?--or may I ask, how you came to know him?"

He looked at her smiling. Diana colored.

"My cousin Fanny made acquaintance with him--in the train."

"I see. Here are our two cousins--coming to meet us. Will you introduce me?"

For Fanny and Miss Drake were now returning slowly along the gravel path which led to the kitchen garden. The eyes of both girls were fixed on the pair advancing toward them. Alicia was no longer impassive or haughty. Like her companion, she appeared to have been engaged in an intimate and absorbing conversation. Diana could not help looking at her in a vague surprise as she paused in front of them. But she addressed herself to her cousin.

"Fanny, I want to introduce Mr. Marsham to you."

Fanny Merton held out her hand, staring a little oddly at the gentleman presented to her. Alicia meanwhile was looking at Diana, while she spoke--with emphasis--to Marsham.

"Could you order my horse, Oliver? I think we ought to be going back."

"Would you mind asking Sir James?" Marsham pointed to the upper terrace. "I have something to see to in the garden."

Diana said hurriedly that Mrs. Colwood would send the order to the stables, and that she herself would not be long. Alicia took no notice of this remark. She still looked at Oliver.

"You'll come back with us, won't you?"

Marsham flushed. "I have only just arrived," he said, rather sharply. "Please don't wait for me.--Shall we go on?" he said, turning to Diana.

They walked on. As Diana paused at the iron gate which closed the long walk, she looked round her involuntarily, and saw that Alicia and Fanny were now standing on the lower terrace, gazing after them. It struck her as strange and rude, and she felt the slight shock she had felt several times already, both in her intercourse with Fanny and in her acquaintance with Miss Drake--as of one unceremoniously jostled or repulsed.

Marsham meanwhile was full of annoyance. That Alicia should still treat him in that domestic, possessive way--and in Diana's presence--was really intolerable. It must be stopped.

He paused on the other side of the gate.

"After all, I am not in a mood to see Robins to-day. Look!--the light is going. Will you show me the path on to the hill? You spoke to me once of a path you were fond of."

She tried to laugh.

"You take Robins for granted?"

"I am quite indifferent to his virtues--even his vices! This chance--is too precious. I have so much to say to you."

She led the way in silence. The hand which held up her dress from the mire trembled a little unseen. But her sense of the impending crisis had given her more rather than less dignity. She bore her dark head finely, with that unconscious long-descended instinct of the woman, waiting to be sued.

They found a path beyond the garden, winding up through a leafless wood. Marsham talked of indifferent things, and she answered him with spirit, feeling it all, so far, a queer piece of acting. Then they emerged on the side of the hill beside a little basin in the chalk, where a gnarled thorn or two, an overhanging beech, and a bed of withered heather, made a kind of intimate, furnished place, which appealed to the passer-by.

"Here is the sunset," said Marsham, looking round him. "Are you afraid to sit a little?"

He took a light overcoat he had been carrying over his arm and spread it on the heather. She protested that it was winter, and coats were for wearing. He took no notice, and she tamely submitted. He placed her regally, with an old thorn for support and canopy; and then he stood a moment beside her gazing westward.

They looked over undulations of the chalk, bare stubble fields and climbing woods, bathed in the pale gold of a February sunset. The light was pure and wan--the resting earth shone through it gently yet austerely; only the great woods darkly massed on the horizon gave an accent of mysterious power to a scene in which Nature otherwise showed herself the tamed and homely servant of men. Below were the trees of Beechcote, the gray walls, and the windows touched with a last festal gleam.

Suddenly Marsham dropped down beside her.

"I see it all with new eyes," he said, passionately. "I have lived in this country from my childhood; and I never saw it before! Diana!--"

He raised her hand, which only faintly resisted; he looked into her eyes. She had grown very pale--enchantingly pale. There was in her the dim sense of a great fulfilment; the fulfilment of Nature's promise to her; implicit in her woman's lot from the beginning.

"Diana!--" the low voice searched her heart--"You know--what I have come to say? I meant to have waited a little longer--I was afraid!--but I couldn't wait--it was beyond my strength. Diana!--come to me, darling!--be my wife!"

He kissed the hand he held. His eyes beseeched; and into hers, widely fixed upon him, had sprung tears--the tears of life's supremest joy. Her lip trembled.

"I'm not worthy!" she said, in a whisper--"I'm not worthy!"

"Foolish Diana!--Darling, foolish Diana!--Give me my answer!"

And now he held both hands, and his confident smile dazzled her.

"I--" Her voice broke. She tried again, still in a whisper. "I will be everything to you--that a woman can."

At that he put his arm round her, and she let him take that first kiss, in which she gave him her youth, her life--all that she had and was. Then she withdrew herself, and he saw her brow contract, and her mouth.

"I know!"--he said, tenderly--"I know! Dear, I think he would have been glad. He and I made friends from the first."

She plucked at the heather beside her, trying for composure. "He would have been so glad of a son--so glad--"

And then, by contrast with her own happiness, the piteous memory of her father overcame her; and she cried a little, hiding her eyes against Marsham's shoulder.

"There!" she said, at last, withdrawing herself, and brushing the tears away. "That's all--that's done with--except in one's heart. Did--did Lady Lucy know?"

She looked at him timidly. Her aspect had never been more lovely. Tears did not disfigure her, and as compared with his first remembrance of her, there was now a touching significance, an incomparable softness in all she said and did, which gave him a bewildering sense of treasures to come, of joys for the gathering.

Suddenly--involuntarily--there flashed through his mind the recollection of his first love-passage with Alicia--how she had stung him on, teased, and excited him. He crushed it at once, angrily.

As to Lady Lucy, he smilingly declared that she had no doubt guessed something was in the wind.

"I have been 'gey ill to live with' since we got up to town. And when the stupid meeting I had promised to speak at was put off, my mother thought I had gone off my head--from my behavior. 'What are you going to the Feltons' for?--You never care a bit about them.' So at last I brought her the map and made her look at it--'Felton Park to Brinton, 3 miles--Haylesford, 4 miles--Beechcote, 2 miles and 1/2--Beechcote Manor, half a mile--total, ten miles.'--'Oliver!'--she got so red!--'you are going to propose to Miss Mallory!' 'Well, mother!--and what have you got to say?' So then she smiled--and kissed me--and sent you messages--which I'll give you when there's time. My mother is a rather formidable person--no one who knew her would ever dream of taking her consent to anything for granted; but this time"--his laugh was merry--"I didn't even think of asking it!"

"I shall love her--dearly," murmured Diana.

"Yes, because you won't be afraid of her. Her standards are hardly made for this wicked world. But you'll hold her--you'll manage her. If you'd said 'No' to me, she would have felt cheated of a daughter."

"I'm afraid Mrs. Fotheringham won't like it," said Diana, ruefully, letting herself be gathered again into his arms.

"My sister? I don't know what to say about Isabel, dearest--unless I parody an old saying. She and I have never agreed--except in opinion. We have been on the same side--and in hot opposition--since our childhood. No--I dare say she will be thorny! Why did you fight me so well, little rebel?"

He looked down into her dark eyes, revelling in their sweetness, and in the bliss of her surrendered beauty. If this was not his first proposal, it was his first true passion--of that he was certain.

She released herself--rosy--and still thinking of Mrs. Fotheringham. "Oliver!"--she laid her hand shyly on his--"neither she nor you will want me to stifle what I think--to deny what I do really believe? I dare say a woman's politics aren't worth much"--she laughed and sighed.

"I say!--don't take that line with Isabel!"

"Well, mine probably aren't worth much--but they are mine--and papa taught them me--and I can't give them up."

"What'll you do, darling?--canvass against me?" He kissed her hand again.

"No--but I _can't_ agree with you!"

"Of course you can't. Which of us, _I_ wonder, will shake the other? How do you know that I'm not in a blue fright for my principles?"

"You'll explain to me?--you'll not despise me?" she said, softly, bending toward him; "I'll always, always try and understand."

Who could resist an attitude so feminine, yet so loyal, at once so old and new? Marsham felt himself already attacked by the poison of Toryism, and Diana, with a happy start, envisaged horizons that her father never knew, and questions where she had everything to learn.

Hand in hand, trembling still under the thrill of the moment which had fused their lives, they fell into happy discursive talk: of the Tallyn visit--of her thoughts and his--of what Lady Lucy and Mr. Ferrier had said, or would say. In the midst of it the fall of temperature, which came with the sunset, touched them, and Marsham sprang up with the peremptoriness of a new relationship, insisting that he must take her home out of the chilly dusk. As they stood lingering in the hollow, unwilling to leave the gnarled thorns, the heather-carpet, and the glow of western light--symbols to them henceforth that they too, in their turn, amid the endless generations, had drunk the mystic cup, and shared the sacred feast--Diana perceived some movement far below, on the open space in front of Beechcote. A little peering through the twilight showed them two horses with their riders leaving the Beechcote door.

"Oh! your cousin--and Sir James!" cried Diana, in distress, "and I haven't said good-bye--"

"You will see them soon again. And I shall carry them the news to-night."

"Will you? Shall I allow it?"

Marsham laughed; he caught her hand again, slipped it possessively within his left arm, and held it there as they went slowly down the path. Diana could not think with any zest of Alicia and her reception of the news. A succession of trifles had shown her quite clearly that Alicia was not her friend; why, she did not know. She remembered many small advances on her own part.

But at the mention of Sir James Chide, her face lit up.

"He has been so kind to me!" she said, looking up into Marsham's face--"so very kind!"

Her eyes showed a touch of passion; the passion that some natures can throw into gratitude; whether for little or much. Marsham smiled.

"He fell in love with you! Yes--he is a dear old boy. One can well imagine that he has had a romance!"

"Has he?"

"It is always said that he was in love with a woman whom he defended on a charge of murder."

Diana exclaimed.

"He had met her when they were both very young, and lost his heart to her. Then she married and he lost sight of her. He accepted a brief in this murder case, ten years later, not knowing her identity, and they met for the first time when he went to see her with her solicitor in prison."

Diana breathlessly asked for the rest of the story.

"He defended her magnificently. It was a shocking case. The sentence was commuted, but she died almost immediately. They say Sir James has never got over it."

Diana pondered; her eyes dim.

"How one would like to do something for him!--to give him pleasure!"

Marsham caressed her hand.

"So you shall, darling. He shall be one of our best friends. But he mustn't make Ferrier jealous."

Diana smiled happily. She looked forward to all the new ties of kindred or friendship that Marsham was to bring her--modestly indeed, yet in the temper of one who feels herself spiritually rich and capable of giving.

"I shall love all your friends," she said, with a bright look. "I'm glad you have so many!"

"Does that mean that you've felt rather lonely sometimes? Poor darling!" he said, tenderly, "it must have been solitary often at Portofino."

"Oh no--I had papa." Then her truthfulness overcame her. "I don't mean to say I didn't often want friends of my own age--girl friends especially."

"You can't have them now!"--he said, passionately, as they paused at a wicket-gate, under a yew-tree. "I want you all--all--to myself." And in the shadow of the yew he put his arms round her again, and their hearts beat together.

But our nature moves within its own inexorable limits. In Diana, Marsham's touch, Marsham's embrace awakened that strange mingled happiness, that happiness reared and based on tragedy, which the pure and sensitive feel in the crowning moments of life. Love is tortured by its own intensity; and the thought of death strikes through the experience which means the life of the race. As her lips felt Marsham's kiss, she knew, as generations of women have known before her, that life could give her no more; and she also knew that it was transiency and parting that made it so intolerably sweet.

"Till death us do part," she said to herself. And in the intensity of her submission to the common lot she saw down the years the end of what had now begun--herself lying quiet and blessed, in the last sleep, her dead hand in Marsham's.

* * * * *

"Why must we go home?" he said, discontentedly, as he released her. "One turn more!--up the avenue! There is light enough yet!"

She yielded weakly; pacifying her social conscience by the half-penitent remark that Mrs. Colwood would have said good-bye to her guests, and that--she--she supposed they would soon have to know.

"Well, as I want you to marry me in six weeks," said Marsham, joyously, "I suppose they will."

"Six weeks!" She gasped. "Oh, how unreasonable!"

"Dearest!--A fortnight would do for frocks. And whom have we to consult but ourselves? I know you have no near relations. As for cousins, it doesn't take long to write them a few notes, and ask them to the wedding."

Diana sighed.

"My only cousins are the Mertons. They are all in Barbadoes but Fanny."

Her tone changed a little. In her thoughts, she added, hurriedly: "I sha'n't have any bridesmaids!"

Marsham, discreetly, made no reply. Personally, he hoped that Miss Merton's engagements might take her safely back to Barbadoes before the wedding-day. But if not, he and his would no doubt know how to deal with her--civilly and firmly--as people must learn to deal with their distasteful relations.

Meanwhile on Diana's mind there had descended a sudden cloud of thought, dimming the ecstasy of her joy. The February day was dying in a yellowish dusk, full of beauty. They were walking along a narrow avenue of tall limes which skirted the Beechcote lands, and took them past the house. Above their heads the trees met in a brown-and-purple tracery of boughs, and on their right, through the branches, they saw a pale full moon, throning it in a silver sky. The mild air, the movements of the birds, the scents from the earth and bushes spoke of spring; and suddenly Diana perceived the gate leading to the wood where that very morning the subtle message of the changing year had come upon her, rending and probing. A longing to tell Marsham all her vague troubles rose in her, held back by a natural shrinking. But the longing prevailed, quickened by the loyal sense that she must quickly tell him all she knew about herself and her history, since there was nobody else to tell him.

"Oliver!"--she began, hurriedly--"I ought to tell you--I don't think you know. My name wasn't Mallory to begin with--my father took that name."

Marsham gave a little start.

"Dear--how surprising!--and how interesting! Tell me all you can--from the year One."

He smiled upon her, with a sparkling look that asked for all her history. But secretly he had been conscious of a shock. Lately he had made a few inquiries about the Welsh Mallorys. And the answers had been agreeable; though the old central stock of the name, to which he presumed Diana belonged, was said to be extinct. No doubt--so he had reflected--it had come to an end in her father.

"Mallory was the name of my father's mother. He took it for various reasons--I never quite understood--and I know a good deal of property came to him. But his original name--my name--was Sparling."

"Sparling!" A pause. "And have you any Sparling relations."

"No. They all died out--I think--but I know so little!--when I was small. However, I have a box of Sparling papers which I have never examined. Perhaps--some day--we might look at them together."

Her voice shook a little.

"You have never looked at them?"

"Never."

"But why, dearest?"

"It always seemed to make papa so unhappy--anything to do with his old name. Oliver!"--she turned upon him suddenly, and for the first time she clung to him, hiding her face against his shoulder--"Oliver!--I don't know what made him unhappy--I don't know why he changed his name. Sometimes I think--there may have been some terrible thing between him--and my mother."

He put his arm round her, close and tenderly.

"What makes you think that?" Then he whispered to her--"Tell your lover--your husband--tell him everything."

She shrank in delicious tremor from the great word, and it was a few moments before she could collect her thoughts. Then she said--still resting against him in the dark--and in a low rapid voice, as though she followed the visions of an inner sense:

"She died when I was only four. I just remember--it is almost my first recollection of anything--seeing her carried up-stairs--" She broke off. "And oh! it's so strange!--"

"Strange? She was ill?"

"Yes, but--what I seem to remember never explains itself--and I did not dare to ask papa. She hadn't been with us--for a long time. Papa and I had been alone. Then one day I saw them carrying her up-stairs--my father and two nurses--I ran out before my nurse could catch me--and saw her--she was in her hat and cloak. I didn't know her, and when she called me, I ran away. Then afterward they took me in to see her in bed--two or three times--and I remember once"--Diana began to sob herself--"seeing her cry. She lay sobbing--and my father beside her; he held her hand--and I saw him hide his eyes upon it. They never noticed me; I don't know that they saw me. Then they told me she was dead--I saw her lying on the bed--and my nurse gave me some flowers to put beside her--some violets. They were the only flowers. I can see her still, lying there--with her hands closed over them."

She released herself from Marsham, and, with her hand in his, she drew him slowly along the path, while she went on speaking, with an effort indeed, yet with a marvellous sense of deliverance--after the silence of years. She described the entire seclusion of their life at Portofino.

"Papa never spoke to me of mamma, and I never remember a picture of her. After his death I saw a closed locket on his breast for the first time. I would not have opened it for the world--I just kissed it--" Her voice broke again; but after a moment she quietly resumed. "He changed his name--I think--when I was about nine years old. I remember that somehow it seemed to give him comfort--he was more cheerful with me afterward--"

"And you have no idea what led him to go abroad?"

She shook her head. Marsham's changed and rapid tone had betrayed some agitation in the mind behind; but Diana did not notice it. In her story she had come to what, in truth, had been the determining and formative influence on her own life--her father's melancholy, and the mystery in which it had been enwrapped; and even the perceptions of love were for the moment blinded as the old tyrannous grief overshadowed her.

"His life"--she said, slowly--"seemed for years--one long struggle to bear--what was really--unbearable. Then when I was about nineteen there was a change. He no longer shunned people quite in the same way, and he took me to Egypt and India. We came across old friends of his whom I, of course, had never seen before; and I used to wonder at the way in which they treated him--with a kind of reverence--as though they would not have touched him roughly for the world. Then directly after we got home to the Riviera his illness began--"

She dwelt on the long days of dumbness, and her constant sense that he wished--in vain--to communicate something to her.

"He wanted something--and I could not give it him--could not even tell what it was. It was misery! One day he managed to write: 'If you are in trouble, go to Riley & Bonner--ask them.' They were his solicitors, whom he had depended on from his boyhood. But since his death I have never wanted anything from them but a little help in business. They have been very good; but--I could not go and question them. If there was anything to know--papa had not been able to tell me--I did not want anybody else--to--"

Her voice dropped. Only half an hour since the flowering of life! What a change in both! She was pacing along slowly, her head thrown back; the oval of her face white among her furs, under the ghostly touch of the moonlight; a suggestion of something austere--finely remote--in her attitude and movement. His eyes were on the ground, his shoulders bent; she could not see his face.

"We must try and unravel it--together," he said, at last, with an effort. "Can you tell me your mother's name?"

"It was an old Staffordshire family. But she and papa met in America, and they married there. Her father died not long afterward, I think. And I have never heard of any relations but the one sister, Mrs. Merton. Her name was Wentworth. Oh!" It was an involuntary cry of physical pain.

"Diana!--Did I hurt your hand? my darling!"

The sudden tightness of his grip had crushed her fingers. She smiled at him, as he kissed them, in hasty remorse.

"And her Christian name?" he asked, in a low voice.

"Juliet."

There was a pause. They had turned back, and were walking toward the house. The air had grown much colder; frosty stars were twinkling, and a chilly wind was blowing light clouds across the moon. The two figures moved slowly in and out of the bands of light and shadow which crossed the avenue.

Diana stopped suddenly.

"If there were something terrible to know!"--she said, trembling--"something which would make you ashamed of me!--"

Her tall slenderness bent toward him--she held out her hands piteously. Marsham's manhood asserted itself. He encircled her again with his strong arm, and she hid her face against him. The contact of her soft body, her fresh cheek, intoxicated him afresh. In the strength of his desire for her, it was as though he were fighting off black vultures of the night, forces of horror that threatened them both. He would not believe what yet he already knew to be true. The thought of his mother clamored at the door of his mind, and he would not open to it. In a reckless defiance of what had overtaken him, he poured out tender and passionate speech which gradually stilled the girl's tumult of memory and foreboding, and brought back the heaven of their first moment on the hill-side. Her own reserve broke down, and from her murmured words, her sweetness, her infinite gratitude, Marsham might divine still more fully the richness of that harvest which such a nature promised to a lover.

* * * * *

"I won't tell any one--but Muriel--till you have seen Lady Lucy," said Diana, as they approached the house, and found Marsham's horse waiting at the door.

He acquiesced, and it was arranged that he should go up to town the following day, Sunday--see Lady Lucy--and return on the Monday.

Then he rode away, waving his hand through the darkness.

* * * * *

Marsham's horse carried him swiftly through country roads, where the moon made magic, and peace reigned. But the mind of the rider groped in confusion and despair, seeing no way out.

Only one definite purpose gathered strength--to throw himself on the counsel of Sir James Chide. Chide had known--from the beginning!