Front matter (continued 7)

As soon as she received Lily Guyse's letter she determined not to see Wolf again for the present. She coaxed Aunt Maud to leave town, and they went to a hotel a few miles out, whence she could easily motor in and interview her lawyers. During the time that the negotiations were pending, she was in a state of mind so unlike herself that Miss Wilson confided to General Grey her wish that Olwen would take a fancy to somebody and marry soon. "If she doesn't, she will be quite soured," said she with a sigh.

"Is there anybody?" he asked.

"Not that I know of. I always had an idea that there was something or somebody, but it was while she was staying away. There was a young doctor—it is possible she is fretting for him. I thought that very irresistible Colonel Guyse might have a chance, but somehow I don't fancy he has made much impression. I suppose the poor child feels that everybody must be after her money."

"Oh, but she is attractive. She need not feel that. She is a girl who would always have had lovers."

"Yes, indeed, Mr. Holroyd would have married her long before anybody dreamed she would be rich. But I am glad she did not care for him. He is not the husband for her; she wants a more dominant person, for she is very wilful and impetuous."

The wilfulness and impetuosity of her niece were more clearly demonstrated in the course of a very few days. Miss Innes announced her intention of starting upon a tour in the north of England.

Miss Wilson was seriously annoyed. She was wrapped up in her own affairs at the time, very busy, every moment occupied, London full, plenty of interest, the General just in the stage when a man may or may not go further according to opportunity.

"What has made you all of a sudden turn against London?" she asked with natural vexation. "You were wild to come here at first."

"I know. One has to find out one's mistakes, and I have found out mine. There are disadvantages that I never foresaw. One is the way in which men keep on asking me to marry them without caring one bit for me, and expect me to take their devotion for granted."

"Nonsense, Olwen!"

"It isn't nonsense. I wish they wouldn't do it. I said to Mr. Lambert only the other day, 'You don't know what love means, you haven't any idea! I am younger than you, but I know and you don't.' He took me up very quickly. 'Do you know by personal experience?' he wanted to know, and I asked him what he meant. 'Has a man made violent love to you—has he kissed you?' he asked. I told him nobody ever had done that; though five men, counting Ben Holroyd, have asked me to marry them. So he said I couldn't know. But I do, so what's the good of arguing? Heigh-ho! One man is just the same as another to me, and I'm sure they all go to the same tailor."

"Don't get bitter, child."

"If any of them looked different, or—weather-stained, or—even did things at a different time from anybody else, like the Snark you know—breakfasted at five o'clock tea and dined on the following day. But in London people are not like that. We are just like the carpet-bedding in the parks, we look all right in the mass, but if you examine any one of us individually, it is a poor little specimen, and if we grew too tall or too big, the gardener would snip us and trim us to make us match the others."

Miss Wilson had no reply to make to this, and the heiress continued after a minute.

"Have you ever heard that if a man brings the girl he loves into a house where a corpse is lying he will never marry her?"

"Really, Ollie, what unpleasant things you sometimes say! No, I never heard of such a thing."

"Well, I did. I believe it's true, too. Superstitions often are. They grow out of wild nature. In some parts of the world wild nature is still alive, and strong enough to hurt. The elements—cold and wind and snow—might kill you there. They have power! But for all that you would be free; ever so much more free than we are here, where everybody's thoughts are coloured by the latest novel that everybody else is reading, too."

"I'm really not sure what you are talking about."

"Oh, I'm not talking, merely thinking aloud. You have got to bear that now and then. If you knew how often I brood over things like this, and how seldom I bore you with them, you would think yourself lucky. I have just now got a craving for solitude and savagery. I want to see a black crag with a frozen lake at its base, and a low grey sky, a flurry of snow, the mist blotting out all the rest of the world—and in the midst of it all just one little place of refuge...."

"At the end of June, I'm afraid, even in the wildest parts of this country, you won't be able to indulge your desire," said Aunt Maud with irony. "Do you want to go abroad?"

"N-no. Only to the north."

"Well, I am afraid I really can't leave town for another fortnight at least."

"Then you mustn't think me a beast if I go off without you. You can join me, wherever I happen to be, can't you? You had better let me go, for I shall be poor company. I have nothing to do, I am at a loose end, and I think if I go somewhere where I can walk and walk and walk till I am so tired that I drop off to sleep the moment I have eaten my supper, I shall regain a more normal view of life. I'll go in the car. Aunt Ethel's in town this week, and she would love it if I were to motor her and Marjorie back to Leeds with me, and drop them at Mount Prospect on my way."

"My child! Go travelling alone! Grandpapa would not like that."

Olwen smiled serenely. "He won't be asked, bless him! Dear aunt, consider my advanced age! Chaperons and dodos now occupy the same glass case in most museums. I'll take Parkinson, and then Heaven knows I shall be respectable enough!"

The plans thus made were duly carried through, as plans made by Olwen had a habit of being.

Mrs. Whitefield, since her niece's accession to wealth, had varied in her feelings between envy and a desire to stand well with the heiress. She accepted all favours offered, but could not forbear disparaging criticism. She was pleased to travel north in the fine Rolls-Royce, but vexed because she could not understand why Ollie should continue her tour alone, instead of taking Marjorie with her. Marjorie had grown stout, and was stolid and uninteresting. Olwen was kindly disposed to her, but just now she felt that her continual company would be quite unbearable, and breathed a sigh of relief, when, after spending a night in the overpowering magnificence of Mount Prospect, she was free to pursue her journey unhindered.

She passed by way of Watling Street, up to the Tyne, pausing when she reached Corbridge, to wander down to the river's edge, and trace the old line of the great highway, through Corstopitum. She slept that night at the Wheatsheaf, and early next morning passed through Hexham and Fourstones, to Bardon Mill, and thence over the shoulder of Barcombe. The hedgerows as they passed were crimson with the glow of such brier-roses as seem to grow only in Northumbria; but when they had passed Vindolana and the Roman milestone, and come out upon Wade's Road, they had reached the end of the hedgerows.

At the Twice-Brewed Inn they stopped, and she left the car with Parkinson and Goddard, the chauffeur, to do as they liked until her return. She was going off by herself to slake her desire to behold once more Duke's Crag and the Hotwells Lough.

Over her head was a sky of cloudless blue, in which larks sang and curlews wheeled, with their mewing cry, over the lonely land. She had a map with her, and was able to make straight for the mile-castle.

She had hardly left the road, and set her face northward, before she was out of sight of all habitations. Before her, on the ridge, lay the long line of the outer vallum, and beyond it the swell of the height which carried the Wall itself, and was precipitous upon its northern face.

After she had climbed some way she could, shading her eyes from the glare, descry, far away to her left, the smoke from the chimney of Hazel Crag, drifting idly on the warm breeze; and she lived again the moment of the opening door, and the face of Balmayne as he recognised the night wanderers.

The cry of sheep, straying on the moor, came to her ears like a far away lament.

Silence and passion, joy and peace,

An everlasting wash of air

Rome's ghost since her decease! ...

This was Ninian's native land. Its freedom, its loneliness, were alike typical of him in her mind. The short turf on which she trod was enamelled with the purple and gold of wild pansies. "There's pansies, that's for thoughts," she found herself whispering; and thoughts were thronging almost unbearably.

In the long, awful months and years of his captivity, how must his wild heart have turned with sick longing to those broad spaces, that galloping wind, that fullness of liberty, that crowded solitude of his native north! She had a fantastic notion that for every time he or she had visited the place in spirit, one little thought-flower had sprung to bear witness of the dream!

She was making for the Gap, like a mountain pass in miniature, which brings one through, close to the dark Lough. The water to-day looked temptingly cool and clear. Somewhere in its depths lay the stone which had struck her head. She did not descend to the plain beyond her, but turned westward and made her way along the ridge to the mile-castle.

To her active feet the distance seemed very short in the fair weather. It was hard even to picture the drifting snow, like cold foam about clogged feet—the keenness of the driving blast, the furious opposition of the elements.

Her imagination brought Ninian so near that she stopped and faced quickly about, with some idea of being followed. There was no one, only the memory-laden landscape looked her in the face, whispered in her ear.... How he had suffered since then! ... She used to read in the papers of the horrors of Griesslauen, harrowing details of typhoid, of bad water, of half rations, of torture.... Had she known what he was enduring she never could have borne it. The very memory forced drops from her eyes as she dwelt upon it.

She reached the mile-castle, where it lay open to the sun. Over its broken wall she could descry the corrugated iron roof of the shed which had sheltered them. Her feet were noiseless on the grass, and her approach was unseen, unheard by the man who sat within, upon a remnant of inner wall.

He was seated sideways, so that she saw his profile. His head was downbent, his elbows rested on his knees. In his hands he held something which at first she took to be a skein of silk, which he was idly pulling through his fingers. His hat lay on the ground beside him, and Olwen saw his hair, thickly sprinkled with grey.

What was it which his fingers ceaselessly caressed? The sun glinted upon it, and it fell in a shower of gold. It was a tress of hair.

A mixture of amazement, joy, and wicked triumph so flooded her that she could hardly see. Hair! It was her own hair! It was the big tress which, to Sunia's rage, Dr. Balmayne had been obliged to cut away in order to sew the wound on her head.

There is no word to describe what she felt, as she fought for composure, schooled the trembling of her limbs and the muscles of her mouth.

His gaze was fixed upon something which lay on the ground between his knees; something too small for her to see. Having made herself ready for the encounter, she let a bit of stone fall, with a rattling noise. He looked up.

Nin it was, but the change in him was at first sight awful.

His face was lined and parchment-like. There were puckers about his eyes, which looked sunken. He might have passed for ten years older than Wolf. For a long instant his look met hers as though he did not see her. Then suddenly there awoke, in his bewildered stare, something that resembled the Ninian she had known. With a swift movement he thrust the tress of hair into his breast pocket, snatched up what lay upon the grass, and with a flicker, a characteristic glance, he opened fire.

"Ah, well, you haven't succeeded in growing any taller, you know, in spite of all your new dignities." His manner, at least, was unchanged, though his voice sounded forced and unnatural.

His words pulled Olwen together wonderfully. She had been on the very verge of self-betrayal—of a burst of silly tears. The familiar mocking seemed to put them back at once, just at the place where they left off, and she summoned her strength to fence with him as of old. "Yes," she replied, with a conventional smile, not moving forward, but speaking from her post in the entrance. "I am still a mouse, as your brother reminded me the other day; only the country mouse has become a town mouse."

A quiver crossed his face as her voice was heard. "Oh," he said, "so you really are, are you? I've once or twice thought I saw you before to-day—slipping round a corner or peeping over a wall; but never face to face like this. How did you get here?"

"My car is waiting at Twice-Brewed. I have walked from there, and am very hot. I didn't expect to find you here."

"Obviously not," he replied, with a grin which showed his teeth to be as good as ever. "You looked as if you had found a black-beetle in the sugar-basin. However, I'm not a fixture, you know." As he spoke, he laid down the thing he held in his hand, as it were furtively, on the stone at the farther side of him, out of sight.

Determined to know what this was, she came suddenly forward and sank on the grass at his feet with a flutter of white skirts. The manoeuvre found him unprepared. Quickly he covered the little square bit of card with his hand; but her eyes were very keen, and she had seen that it was her own photo. She remembered that she had extracted it from a drawer while at the Pele, with the intention of sending it to her father, and had placed it on the mantelshelf in her room. She had never noticed the fact that it was not among the things so carefully packed and returned after her departure.

Now, it told her all! She found him here, in this place, sacred to a memory which she alone could share; and with him he brought her picture and a tress of hair!

Her courage rose with one bound, for all doubt was solved. Her lips curved with mischief as she looked up at him provocatively, bold in the delightful knowledge that she was prettier than she used to be, and that her clothes set her off to the best advantage.

"Since you don't ask me to be seated, I do so without ceremony!"

"My manners have gone to pieces since I saw you last. Pretty annoying, isn't it, to think how you wasted time and instruction on me?"

"Oh," was her retort, "I'm not surprised. I remember you had decided that you could not keep it up! You prepared me for a lapse."

"It's worse than a lapse. It's what you might describe as a débâcle if you knew as much French as I do."

She was below him, facing him, and she looked up steadily at him as she replied:

"Ah, well, I suppose I shall have to begin all over again."

That moved him. "No, by God you don't—not again," he answered defiantly.

"Do you suppose that you can stop me, if my mind is made up?"

"Upon my word, you have the cheek of the——"

"Cheek! I should think I have. Don't be under the impression that you can browbeat me."

"If you'll take my advice, you'll run away to that car of yours as fast as your expensively shod feet will take you. I'm not good company to-day for the wealthy and frivolous."

"I know, you always did find me a bore. But you can't get rid of me so easily as all that. I had the intention of coming to the Pele to call upon Madam, but as we have met here, perhaps you will take this as a call—like the two ladies in Punch, who met while bathing? Now let us begin to talk properly, and remember as much as you can of the nice manners I once taught you. How is your mother, Mr. Guyse?"

His face, which had changed a dozen times as she teased him, settled into a scowl. "She is very ill," he said gruffly, "and she is getting worse. That's a topic I can't joke about."

"I don't ask you to joke. I think you ought to consider it very seriously. Madam needs change of air and scene. Why don't you take her away somewhere—say to the Riviera?"

He looked at her as if he could box her ears with pleasure. "Oh, just because I don't choose," he answered savagely. "I like to thwart her, just for the sake of thwarting her, as you ought to know by this time."

"I do know, but I like to force you to admit it," said she with a demure smile. "I am wondering whether I could not do something to help cheer her up. I often think with regret of the fact that I refused to do what she wanted me to do so badly. I—I wonder whether it would do any good now.... Or whether it is too late."

She pulled a blade of grass from beside her, and twisted it round her fingers, carefully keeping her eyes fixed upon it.

"Afraid I can't help you to a decision," he said harshly.

"Oh, yes, you can. In fact, it all depends on you," she replied, in a very small voice. "Do you remember our last talk at the Pele—when you came in to tea and I was so kind, I had kept yours hot for you, and I stayed to pour it out? And do you remember that on that occasion, in the intervals of drinking your tea, you did me the honour to ask me to marry you?"

"Did I? I must have been an ass."

"Well, perhaps you were. But I really am not sure. Perhaps I was the ass for saying NO. Anyway, it has been in my mind that I ought to have said Yes, on account of Madam. Don't you agree?"

He sprang to his feet. "Not in the humour to-day for any more twaddle," he said, laughing, with a catch in his breath. "I—I know I've been a beast and—and drawn this on myself, but have a little pity for me. This morning I've heard that the last blow has fallen. I'm now not merely a beggar but an outcast. I can't sit bandying words with you, I tell you I can't stand it."

She did not move, but answered with a quiet which disarmed him. "Well, I won't keep you long, but as we have met, I wish you would just put up with me for a few minutes longer. You have roused all my curiosity and I think you ought to satisfy it. What do you mean by saying that you are not merely a beggar but an outcast?"

"Just what I say. When I did the one thing I shall regret all my life, and asked you to marry me, I did think I had something to offer a woman. Now I've nothing. It is sold over my head—the Pele I mean—and I shall have to take Madam on my back and tramp the country, asking the charitable for shelter."

He had sunk down in his place again, and sat there, eyes fiercely fixed on the contemplation of his troubles.

"Oh, Nin," she said softly, "don't you think even having to marry me might be better than that? It does sound so uncomfortable for poor Madam."

He looked at her, marvelling at her cruelty, and made a shrinking movement, as if hurt. "Out there," he said, after a pause, "out in Griesslauen I used to think I had endured everything a man could, and that hereafter I might reckon myself immune to pain. But I—I expect you have the right. If you get any satisfaction out of baiting me, go on. It's up to me to take what you give."

She rose deliberately from where she had been sitting, and went away a few paces. He raised his head. She had gone to the door of the shed in which they had sheltered and stood staring in. After a while she turned slowly and caught his look fixed upon her. The colour flowed warm over her face.

"Perhaps," said she in a low voice, "perhaps your mother was right. It—it was very unconventional, wasn't it? Do you think—perhaps—on those grounds—I was wrong to say 'No'?"

He stood up, and his face was rigidly set. "I think you had better go," was all he said.

She turned to him, looking not into his face but somewhere about his second waistcoat button. "So you won't marry me on Madam's account—nor because it would be more comme il faut. Would you marry me—now tell the truth—if by doing so you could get back the Pele?"

"No!" he shouted wrathfully. "No, no, and yet again no! I wouldn't marry you if you were hung all over with silver and gold—not if you were Venus and Diana rolled into one——"

"Well, well, well, you needn't make such a noise about it. I'm not a bit deaf—"

He broke off, seeming to swallow rage in gulps. For a moment he surveyed her critically, as if he sneered at her fine clothes, then he turned abruptly on his heel. "Good-bye," he said shortly, making for the entrance.

CHAPTER XXXV

'TWIXT CUP AND LIP

"Oh, please wait a minute," said his tormentor; "I have a great deal more to say before we part."

He halted, though chafing against himself for displaying such weakness, and stood, his hands in his pockets, glowering at her small figure, instinct with energy, erect in the sunny enclosure, framed by the grey stones.

She smiled at him, a rapt kind of smile, seeming more occupied with her own thoughts than with him.

"Oh, doesn't it all look different?" she asked.

"I don't know quite what you mean, but everything is different—the whole world is changed since you and I were last here."

"Yes. Utterly changed. The only thing that remains the same is just the very thing I thought would have changed most."

"And that is?"

"You."

"Ah, well, if you think so, that only shows what a little duffer you must be," he snapped.

"All right. I'm a duffer now. That is a change, since you used to look up to me, or pretend you did! However, it doesn't much matter. I want you to do me a very small favour. Walk back with me to Twice-Brewed."

"No fear. What for?"

"I'll explain. I am doing a little tour up in the north—nobody is with me but my maid. I was intending to call at the Pele to-morrow, to leave something there—a little present for Madam and—and you. You were very kind to me when I was with you, and I was so ill afterwards that you never got properly thanked. Now it occurs to me that as we have met I can motor you home, going on afterwards to Caryngston, where I am to stay the night. I have written to the Seven Spears, and Mrs. Askwith expects me. By the way, how were you going to get home if I had not met you?"

"On my feet, of course."

"Well, you may as well come in the car instead."

He considered her, half angry, half amused. "You and your car!"

She laughed out gaily. "It does seem absurd, doesn't it? But you might come and look at it. It's such a nice one. Don't be disagreeable."

"I never need make any effort in that direction. It comes natural."

"It doesn't. You cultivate it because you think it's clever, but you are completely mistaken. Now come along, and be thankful I can go on my own feet to-day instead of having to make use of yours."

"I'm not sure there's any cause for thankfulness in that."

"Oh, you are perverse! You must have got out of bed the wrong side this morning. I wonder how I put up with you; but, you see, I feel a little responsible. Having begun your education and then allowed it to lapse, the least I can do is to be patient with you."

"I have frequently met with assurance," he remarked, "but for sheer brazen impudence, I certainly never met your equal."

"And I don't think you ever will," she replied, as though highly complimented.

Her feet went dancing over the heathery grass, mauve with harebells. Her heart was beating so wildly that she wondered if it could be audible. She had to fight her impulse to turn and cling to him as he strode beside her, gaunt and bony, the marks of suffering plainly on him, but Nin still—the same Nin. She refrained, however. There was something delicious in the present moment. She wanted to prolong it—wanted to know what he would do when he found out that the Pele was his.

Suddenly he spoke. "Well, it will, as a matter of fact, be a convenience to me to get back home quickly," said he, "for I have to put myself inside a tail coat and go and dine with the Kendalls."

"The Kendalls!" she cried ... and, in the extremity of her surprise, the next words came out without her own consent. "Why, what in the world do they want with you now?"

He grinned in the way she knew so well. "You may well ask. Perhaps you haven't heard of poor Noel's death. That leaves me heir to the rotten title, worse luck!"

"Nin," said a low, changed voice from under her hat, "tell me the truth. Are you engaged to her?"

There was a long, dreadful pause. "Yes," he said at last, "I think I am. That is, her father has given his consent. That's what I am going over about to-night."

"And you—and you—you could bear—to come up here—with that in your mind?"

"I came up here," he answered heavily, "to say good-bye to a dream."

They went on for some way in silence. She told herself that no well-conducted young woman could venture farther than she had done in the direction of encouragement. The light went out of the skies, her step flagged, she could have cast herself upon the grass and wept. Yet for very pride she could not say, "Jilt her, marry me!" Had he not sworn with energy that nothing would induce him to marry her?

"Well," said she at last, primly. "I can but hope you will be very happy."

"Happy?" he said with a fierce little snort.

"There's one drawback, Sunia doesn't like her. Sunia does like me. You don't know how many times I have longed for her; my present maid is a kind of fish, she never entertains me with spells or mesmerising or fortune-telling or any of the devices to make time pass agreeably, of which Sunia is mistress. I wonder whether I could tempt her with very high wages to come to me and desert Madam!"

"She won't desert me, even when Miss Kendall is her mistress."

"I don't think you need build on that. Miss Kendall won't keep her a month."

"Jove! I never thought of that!"

"Well, I hope you will, under the circumstances, excuse my having proposed marriage to you this afternoon. I can only say in extenuation that I had no idea your affections were already engaged, or I would have been more discreet. Why, here we are already within sight of the inn. What a little way down it really is! A couple more fields and we are on the road! Goddard must have seen us coming down; he has brought the car along, I see."

They spoke only trivialities until they reached the gate which the chauffeur held open.

Olwen came out in a kind of dream. She felt as if she had been to a function which she imagined was a wedding and it had turned out, as sometimes in nightmare, to be a funeral after all.

She addressed Ninian with a self-possessed smile, asking him to sit by Goddard and direct him. Then she got into the car with Parkinson, who proceeded to remove her mistress's wide-brimmed hat and tie her up in her motor-bonnet as they sped along.

It was past five by the time they reached the little road that branched off to the Pele. Olwen stopped the car.

"It is getting so late that, as you have to dress, Mr. Guyse, I will not call upon Madam this afternoon," said she. "I shall hope to give myself that pleasure another time, if I ever come back to this neighbourhood, which, perhaps, is not very likely. Meanwhile, may I trouble you to carry this parcel to her? It is really a present for you, but I think she may share in its enjoyment. Give her my kind remembrances. Good-bye."

Tongue-tied before the two servants, he made his adieux. Now it was he whose eyes eagerly sought for a glance from hers, but in vain. She felt as if one look would break down her pride, and that she would show some inkling of what she was enduring. As on the day when he had put her into the train at Raefell, they parted with barely a farewell. In a couple of minutes the car had become a dark speck upon the moor road to Caryngston.

... She had but just glimpsed the grey tower—had hardly ventured even a glance, so sorely did she fear to give herself away. Now she leaned back in her corner, drawing down her veil to hide the drops that swam in her eyes, yet not daring to give way or to relieve her feelings by any sign of what she was going through.

Caryngston in summer-time was quite an attractive village. Over the porch of the Seven Spears clambered a Gloire de Dijon rose. On the long benches outside the doors sat the hard-bitten northern farmers, enjoying the restful moment. Deb stood in the porch, and her eyes lit up as she recognised the little lady who had come in the snow upon an evening now far back in the mists of that antique period usually alluded to as "before the war."

As they entered the passage, whose very wall-paper was unchanged, each moment, each event of the former occasion revived with poignant freshness.

Deb had plenty to say, the whole war news of the village to give. Her young daughter had married the bootmaker's son the first time ever he came home on leave. She pointed out the house now inhabited by the reunited couple. "And she's a deal luckier than the most of 'em. Her man's only short of one foot, and that's no matter for the boot trade." It was a comfort to find her so absorbed in what she had to impart, as not to be very inquisitive concerning Olwen's own affairs, after once she had expatiated upon the wonderful fate that had befallen the "yoong lass" in having all that "brass" bequeathed to her.

Supper was presently partaken of, and removed. At last, about half-past eight, Olwen was left alone, in the depths of that armchair where once she had sat swelling with resentment at Nin's impertinence. She had told Parkinson to go to bed, and was therefore free to indulge unnoticed in the luxury of red eyes. Her tears flowed fast.

What folly had been hers! She had spent such a sum of money as, following on her large disbursements throughout the war, would make a real difference to her—and this in order to bestow the Pele upon Rose Kendall, the odious girl who had treated Mrs. Guyse's companion with studied insolence. Yet she gave thanks that she had given it. In the first passionate tumult of mortification, upon hearing of his engagement, she had been tempted to withhold the gift. She had put that temptation by. Having started to right a wrong, she could give Nin the one thing he wished to have, even though her own happiness proved to have been permanently lost. She had misjudged him, she had been ungenerous, undiscriminating, and for this she desired to make amends. Ninian, at a time when he knew her father to be dead and his own discreditable secret safe, had yet confessed. She in return, at a time when she knew him to be about to marry another woman, and her own happiness to be lost, yet held to her resolution to make him once more master of the Pele.

By this deed she felt that she proved herself worthy of him.

Though they would never see each other again, yet there would lie between them the memory of high things. It would make a sanctuary of life in the future—that future which loomed before her so long and so dark. As the slow minutes dragged on she fancied Ninian and his betrothed sitting together—left alone, no doubt, by considerate parents, so that they might make love.

Such are the torments of jealousy that Miss Innes was quite exhausted by their keenness.

He had never made love to her. He had never kissed her!

If ever she had hated anyone she hated Rose Kendall at that moment.

She felt as if ages had passed when she began to hear the stir which indicated the closing of the inn for the night: the sound of the kitchen fire being raked out, benches pushed back, voices raised and dying in the distance, the opening and shutting of doors. The hoofs of a horse clattered on the paved market stones, and ceased abruptly. Deb rattled some crockery in a cupboard, and her husband on the other side of the house turned a great key in a lock.

Olwen must go to bed. She lifted a drenched handkerchief and wiped away the drops which still fell fast. She had extinguished the lamp, and was sitting in the dark. Thus she might slip past Deb without exciting remark.

The door opened. She spoke, trying to use a natural voice: "It's all right, Mrs. Askwith; I am not gone to bed, but I am just—going."

The door shut as softly, as swiftly as it had opened. The person who had entered moved round the table in the gloom and came close, standing over her as she cowered back into the depths of the big old porter's chair.

CHAPTER XXXVI

IN THE DARK

She heard the breathing of one who has ridden hard and far, and right through her there shuddered a thrill so exquisite that for a moment she could not move. She was on the point of springing up, flinging herself into those unseen arms, when she heard his voice, low and mocking.

"You little wretch—you treacherous minx! Don't you think you are the limit?"

As in the mile-castle, she had but the time it took him to deliver himself of this courteous address in which to meet the challenge. She did it, however. If she died for it he should not know that she had been sitting there crying for the moon until her eyes were all swelled and her "hanshif" drenched.

"You must have left your dinner engagement very early, Mr. Guyse. It is barely ten o'clock. However, as I have been travelling all day I am very tired, and I will ask you to excuse me."

"You may ask, but you won't get excused," he said rapidly. "What the dickens are you sitting in the dark for? I want to see your wicked face—to see the conscious guilt steal over it! How dare you? Oh, how dare you insult me as you have insulted me to-day?" With a sudden change of tone he added, after a moment's breathless silence: "How could you plan such a fiendish vengeance?"

"Vengeance! How fatiguing you are!" said she languidly. "What vengeance should I want? I am giving you what you love most in the world. You always have wanted it—don't deny it! You would even almost, have married me in order to secure it! Only I bored you so utterly! However, if you are talking about insults, I don't think I can beat the one you have offered me. You couldn't bring yourself to marry me, but you can bring yourself to marry a poll parrot like that Kendall thing! Oh, do go away; I wonder I have the patience to talk to you at all!"

"I wonder I have the patience not to shake you! ... Do you happen to know where there are some matches?"

"I'll call Deb and ask for some." ...

She rose from the depths of the chair, and found her hands held.

"Why, you're as cold as a stone! Sitting alone in the dark and the cold—you're actually shivering——"

"That's with rage, not cold. Good night, Mr. Guyse. Sorry I can't stop and talk to you, but you pay your calls at unseemly hours."

"Olwen!" It seemed he was in earnest at last. He had never before called her by her name. "Could you really be so stupid, so utterly unlike yourself, as to imagine that I should accept that deed of gift?"

She gave a little low chuckle. "You can't help accepting it, silly."

"Haven't you got the sense to see that it must be all or nothing between me and you?"

"Well, the choice lies with you, I suppose."

"You suppose nothing of the kind," he cried in exasperation. "You know that all is out of the question, so it must be nothing from you to me—Miss Innes!"

He was so near her that the warmth and energy of him seemed to enfold her. His breath still came fast—and no wonder. The distance between Caryngston and the Pele, though easy in a motor, was a long, hard ride. She knew that he could not have been at the Kendalls at all. She felt that he was within an ace of sheer explosion, yet still he resisted. Would nothing break down his pride?

"Nin"—she threw all the appeal she could into her voice—"Nin, what do you mean? Why do you say that it is out of the question for me to give you—all?"

"Because you don't love me."

"Indeed? And what about you? You don't love me, either."

He gave a rough sort of laugh as if of utter scorn. "You unprincipled woman! Here, I have had enough of this bo-peep, I am going to make a light."

He let go her hands to feel in his pocket for matches; and instantly she made a dart to get past him. He gave an exclamation.

"No, you don't!" dropped the match-box and caught her as she fled—caught her in both arms, held her a breathless moment in silence, breathing hard. Then, with a muttered ejaculation which sounded like "That's done it!" he bent his head down to where he supposed the top of her head to be. She had flung back her throat, and instead of the hair he meant to kiss, he found her lips....

* * * * *

"Well, it's your fault. You shouldn't have said I didn't love you! Such an obvious lie, now wasn't it?"

The dark still enfolded them. She lay in his arms; but she could not answer. Life had gone past speech.

"What is it?" he whispered. "Are you angry? Have I hurt you?"

He had to bend very close to catch what she said:

"At last!"

"At last!" he echoed; "but girls are the very queerest! Why on earth, if you felt like this, did you treat me in the old days as though you wouldn't have anything to do with me?"

"Oh, Nin, it would take such ages to explain. I—I couldn't even begin yet. I'm—I'm too completely muddled.... Hadn't you better put me down now?"

His hold did not slacken. "You are such a will-o'-the-wisp that I dread letting you go, in case you slip away into the dark, as you used to do when I dreamed of you at Griesslauen. Let me sit in the big chair and hold you as I did in the mile-castle—my little white-crane lady!" His odd voice held the tenderest, shyest note—both tones so new to her that they caused delicious shivers to pass through her, as if at a caressing touch. He sat down as he had suggested, cradling her head against him, and added with a choky laugh, "Gad, perhaps it's as well it happened in the dark, so that you could forget the kind of scarecrow I have turned into. You saw to-day, though, up on the moor. You once told me that I looked like a demon. An elderly demon isn't at all a charming sight, I should suppose."

She slipped an arm about his neck. "You have altered, I won't deny it. But you are going to get back all your looks. Wait till you have had a six months' honeymoon! Even Sunia won't know you at the end!" And there her control gave way and she began to sob. "When I think—when I think—what you have gone through——"

"It was bad. But it's over. Yes, it was pretty bad. We won't talk of it now. You see, I was only a private. I went and enlisted in the Gordons because I had no previous military experience. There wasn't a hope of my getting a commission; and I wanted to get out there quick. So I did; I was out of England into France, and out of France into Germany before you could say 'Knife.' ... Well, if Germany is going to receive retribution at the hands of Providence for all her misdeeds, it's likely to be a good while before she's through."

"You are not to think of such things now, but to listen to me. There is one thing I simply must know. When you looked up to-day and saw me standing there in the mile-castle, what did you think? Now don't tease, boy, tell me really."

"I would if I could, but I can't. I felt as if I couldn't feel anything. The only idea left was a determination to keep my end up."

"And I was just as determined to break you down."

"Much you know about it! Break me down with your flippant Leap-Year proposals, which merely shocked me! ... That was what made me run over my whole list of ammunition and hit upon Rose Kendall!"

"Nin!" Two hands, which small though they may have been were still decidedly vigorous, went round his throat. "Were you having me on? Tell the truth now!"

"I can't, if you choke me! Well, yes and no. I was and I wasn't. It is not true that I am engaged to her, but they have been letting me see that they would be pleased enough if it came about. I was thinking that by going there this evening I was perhaps committing myself. Anyway, I thought it just possible that if I threw that stone it might hit you and hurt you, and I wanted to hurt you as much as I possibly could, because I knew I could never ask you, and you had shown such incredible effrontery in asking me! You really did deserve——"

"But, Nin, you are a perfect owl! If you thought I should mind being told you were engaged to the poll-parrot, how can you say you thought I didn't care for you?"

"Oh, I don't know! Weren't you sticking pins into me all over?"

She laid her cheek close against his. "Effrontery!" she echoed, with a gleeful chuckle. "Yes, I was rather outrageous, wasn't I? Your prunes-prism school-marm asking you right out to marry her! But, you see, you had given yourself away completely. I saw you some minutes before you knew I was there ... and I saw what you had in your hand."

She boldly plunged her hand into his coat pocket, but found nothing.

He laughed. "Not there, not there, my child. I can't show it you without pulling off my coat and rolling up my sleeve. I've got a 'bracelet of bright hair about the bone' like the chap in Donne's verses ... it went to Griesslauen with me.... Kiddie, this is too good to be true. How nice and soft your cheek is against mine! Just like a peach. Does mine feel scratchy? Bum, isn't it, that it should be such bliss to rub them against each other! Oh, Jove! Here's Mother Deb!"

They had but a moment to regain their feet before the sleepy landlady was upon them, bearing a candle in her hand.

"All in the dark! Then he must have gone," she began, and broke off to continue, in a shocked voice, "Muster Nin, it's time you was a-going."

"You'll have to put me up here tonight, Deb, and to-morrow, yoong lass'll be away oop to t' Pele with me. We're going to get wed, yoong lass and me! What d'you think o' that?"

CHAPTER XXXVII

VINDICATED

In the gay morning air the car rushed over the high plain, carrying two lovers to the grim Pele.

Olwen had informed Parkinson that she was going to stay a few days with Mrs. Guyse, but that she must leave her behind, as she was not sure of there being the necessary accommodation. She therefore wished her to remain at the Seven Spears until further orders. As a fact, she felt most uncertain of the treatment her maid would be likely to receive at the hands of the ayah.

Parkinson listened grimly, with an offended air that made Miss Innes feel that a month's notice must be impending. She hoped it was, for she knew that this woman could never be an inmate of her future home.

Early that morning Ezra had ridden into Caryngston upon one of the farm horses. He came to bring news of the sudden grave increase of Madam's illness, and to fetch Dr. Balmayne.

Olwen's experience of sickness, gained so recently, caused her to be very prompt in action. She telegraphed to Newcastle for a nurse, begged Dr. Balmayne to send his car to Picton Bars to bring her up when she arrived, and offered to take him now to the Pele in her own fast car, and to send him back by the same means.

She also insisted that Ninian should telegraph to Wolf the news of his mother's condition before leaving the town.

There was embarrassment on both sides at the first meeting between Miss Innes and the doctor, especially when Ninian, at her special request, announced to him the fact of their engagement.

He warmly congratulated the bridegroom elect, but was unable to feel that the lady was to be congratulated. However, he concealed his opinion as best he could. Having regard as much to his feeling as to their own, Olwen placed him beside Goddard on the journey, so that Nin and she might sit together. The night seemed to have worked a miracle in her lover. The light had come back to his eye, the glow to his cheek; he looked ten years younger already, as she assured him when she came down to breakfast and found him hungrily in wait for her. He commenced the day's amenities by the remark that he hardly knew which he wanted most, his girl or his breakfast.

"I object to being lifted up like a baby," said she reprovingly, as she smoothed her rumpled hair after his fervent greeting.

"I always did think what fun it would be to carry you about," was the unabashed reply. "I very nearly tried, that last evening at the Pele, when you declared you had a great mind to say 'Yes.'"

"If you had, Nin, I should never have run away," she whispered. "You could have held me with one hand, with a word, a look. You knew that, didn't you?"

"No, I didn't. I only knew that I couldn't, somehow. I had to let you go. But in my heart I thought—if you did care—and Sunia kept on telling me you did—that you would forgive me. Oh, my aunt, if you knew how I hoped and craved and expected day after day. It never dawned on me that you would drop me utterly. I don't know what I expected, but not that!"

"If you had known beforehand that I should drop you utterly, would you still have told Grandpapa?"

"Oh, I had to tell him in any case," he answered simply.

She then described how her grandfather had received from him the impression that he felt no attachment to her, but had been tempted only by her fortune. She made him understand something of her own agony of humiliation, and of what she had gone through before her impulsive flight.

He had no idea that Madam had told her of her own loveless marriage—of how another Ninian Guyse had wedded her for her fortune. "It was always running in my head," the girl confessed, "I could never forget the exact words she used—'He was as deep in debt as I in love.' You can understand how exactly it seemed to apply."

"The thing I thought you would find it hardest to forgive," said he, "if you ever found it out, was our tampering with your correspondence. I loathed the necessity, but having once started on the beastly plot, it had to be done thoroughly, for we knew we had very little time—you must hear before long that you were an heiress, which would shut my mouth—and, after all our care, the one letter which gave the show away came straight to your hands through Dr. Balmayne! I think the knowledge of that was what made me throw up the dirty game. I said, Providence is taking care of this little girl. Am I such a hound as to interfere?"

"It was too late then," was her low reply. "You had done the mischief."

"I somehow felt that it was so, wild as it sounded. It seemed impossible to believe that you were not feeling something of the storm that was shaking me. I thought if I could take you and hold you tight, I might make you believe in me, even when I had told you the truth. But you were too wise——"

"Too cowardly!"

"Too well protected by guardian angels!"

So they talked; and by the time they reached the tower they had talked out all remnants of misunderstanding.

Mrs. Baxter had been on the watch for the doctor's car, and came out into the courtyard. Her face, as she saw who sat with the master, was a curious study.

"Why, if it isn't oor yoong leddy!" said she, staring.

Olwen, lifted out like a doll by Ninian, and set down upon the stones, ran to the good woman and gave her gay greeting.

"Oh, I am glad to see you! How's poor Madam?"

"A little easier-like this morning," was the answer. Nin went off at once to take the doctor upstairs, after asking Mrs. Baxter to show Goddard where to keep the car, and to provide for his sleeping accommodation.

"Where's ayah?" asked Olwen eagerly.

"She was upstairs with Madam," said Mrs. Baxter. Olwen guessed that Nin would send her down, but without telling her who was awaiting her. In fact this was just what he did.

"You're wanted below, ayah," he said to her, when Balmayne had been ushered into the sick room.

Olwen stood in the hall, talking softly to Mrs. Baxter, and noiselessly the curtains parted and the little brown face, framed in its saree, made its appearance.

The Hindu stopped short. For a moment the surprise was overwhelming. She had wondered what had come to her sahib, dashing off on horseback quite late in the evening, and not returning all night—a thing he had not done since she could remember. Just now as he spoke to her upstairs, the light in his eyes, the thrill in his voice had moved her as she had not been moved since first he had come home from his German prison, broken, changed, despairing.

Here stood the answer to the puzzle, and in a swift moment Sunia was on her knees, holding Olwen's hands, kissing them repeatedly, murmuring soft Hindustani words of caressing.

"Ah, Sunia, you have been at your wicked spells," laughed the girl, "all the time I have been away! I have heard you calling, calling, never ceasing. I have struggled hard, but I am here at last—and I am never, never going away again!"

The woman threw up her hands with a wild gesture. "Oh, Missee, my Missee, if only one little week—few days ago! You come too late! My sahib lost his castle! He never be really happy now, even with you!"

"I'm so vain that I think he would be really happy, even without the castle, as long as he had me! But never mind, dear, it isn't too late! He has got back his old tower all right! I was in time, only just in time!"

For the first time she saw Sunia overpowered. Sinking to the floor, the woman wrapped herself in the folds of her saree and her thin form shook with the intensity of her feeling.

"Sunia," softly said Olwen presently, "do you feel better? Can you listen?"

The woman raised her face, all quivering. "And I ask my gods to curse my Missee!" she cried in anguish.

"Well, but they knew I didn't deserve to be cursed, so they took no notice," cried Olwen playfully. "Here I am, alive and well, and all the rest of my life I am just going to try and make your sahib happy. Now you must wipe your eyes and get up, because I have brought my luggage with me, and I am going to stay here."

Sunia bounded to her feet. "Ayah dear," laughed the soft little voice, "I am rich now, very rich, and I have a maid who waits on me. May I send for her to come and be my maid here?"

Violent rage transformed Sunia's face. "She not come here," muttered she; "I see to my Missee, I dress my Missee for her wedding."

"You shall, I promise you," replied the girl, fairly hugging the little woman.

It was a busy day. They had the nurse installed by soon after midday, and at about three Olwen was admitted to kiss and smile at her future mother-in-law.

Mrs. Guyse was looking terribly ill and thin, but she was fully conscious and evidently took great pleasure in the sight of the girl.

Olwen told her that she must make haste and get strong enough to be moved, so that she could go away to the south of Europe and grow quite well. Would she not like that? Wolf could take her, while Nin and she went for their wedding journey.

Madam seemed quite pleased, and smiled; but there was a curious expression in her eyes as she turned them on the girl. She pressed the hand that held hers. "You are good and kind, my child. We treated you very badly. You have returned good for evil, and I could not bear for you to be—unhappy."

"Unhappy, dear? I hope there is little chance of that. Nobody in the world was ever so happy as I."

"I have been very ill," said Madam faintly, "and that makes one think. I have lain here and thought ... and there is something ... something you ought to know. Will you send Nin to me, my dear?"

"Don't you think," urged Olwen, "that you should wait until you are stronger? It is very likely that Nin will tell me the thing you have in mind. We have had so little time as yet to talk things over. Try not to worry."

Madam hesitated. "Well, perhaps. But I think he will not tell you. He has never told me, often as I have begged him to. However, you can ask him. Ask him—as a message from me—tell him that I adjure him, before marrying you, to tell you the truth about—about Lily Martin."

Lily Martin! Her name had vanished from Olwen's very thoughts. That story, which had so occupied her mind formerly as to blot out any other idea, had now receded into the dim background. However, she hastened to reassure Madam. "Dear, he told me all about that, long, long ago, while I was here."

Madam smiled. "I think not."

Olwen's heart beat. To Madam in her weak state she dare not say anything of what she knew. The patient lay still for a few minutes, then in a weak voice, gave some directions. Olwen was to find a key, unlock the bureau in Madam's sitting-room, take thence a dispatch-box, open that, and bring the envelope it contained to her.

Carefully carrying out instructions, the girl easily found the required paper, and brought it to the bedside.

"Open it—look," whispered Madam.

Olwen drew from the envelope another, which had been partially burned. This was the remains of a letter which had been through the post. It was thus addressed:

Mrs. Ninian Guyse,

3, Lockerbie Terra Southamp

The remains of the address had been burned away. She looked at it in some bewilderment.

"The day that Miss Martin tried to kill herself, she burnt a lot of old letters in the billiard-room grate," whispered the sick woman. "I came in and found this, which had fallen out of the fire. I picked it up, thinking that some day—some day—I would have the truth from Ninian. I hid it carefully, and was thankful it was I who found it. If there had been an inquest, it would have been terribly strong evidence. As it was, it all passed off. I suppose he has been keeping her ever since, and that is how he gets rid of so much money; but I have never spoken to him of it."

"Is it his writing?" asked the girl.

"Yes."

"I will talk to him about it," said Olwen quietly; "but I think you may be certain that he is not to blame."

"If I could be! In other ways, he has been a good son, in spite of his odd manner. You really love him, in spite of his manners, my dear?"

"Because of them, I believe," laughed the girl, bending to kiss her and to hide the colour in her cheeks. "I wouldn't change him."

She said nothing to Ninian of what had passed until after tea that evening. They had it in the dining-room, and grew very foolish over their memories of the last time they had shared the function.

Afterwards, resisting the lure of his desire to play and be silly like two children, she told him there was something she must speak about, of a not particularly pleasant character; and that she demanded his full attention.

"Madam surprised me to-day," she went on, "by speaking on a subject which I would far rather were not mentioned between us; but what she said makes it necessary that the whole matter should be cleared up. She and you have never understood each other. You think she loves you less than Wolf, because she has a feeling of resentment against you, for making her live here, contrary to her inclination. But that's only partly true. She has something else to charge you with; and she has told me what it is."

He was evidently surprised, and asked for an explanation with all the seriousness that she could desire.

"Before I say anything of what Madam showed me to-day," she continued, "I want you to read a letter which reached me in London some days ago. Its contents may not be news to you. I am inclined to suppose that they are not. The affair had faded from my mind, for the thought of you drives out everything else; but after what your mother said, I am sure you ought to know the whole truth."

So saying, she put into his hands the letter she had received from the ci-devant Lily Martin.

She watched his face with acute curiosity as he read, and she could see that he was unprepared for what he found.

"Wolf's wife! ... That girl!" was all he said; but his voice expressed extreme distaste.

Laying down the letter he propped his chin on his hands, and puckered his mouth into a soundless whistle; then, flinging himself back in his chair, "This is a facer for me," he muttered.

Leaning forward, she laid a hand caressingly on his forehead, stroking back the hair. "Nin, did you know nothing of it?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "Honestly, no, I didn't. I don't say that I didn't know he was in some matrimonial scrape, for I did. If it hadn't been that he was not free he wouldn't have allowed me to have the first innings with you. He was awfully fed up about that. He has drained me of every penny I could spare, and most of those I couldn't spare, in order to continue her allowance. He always said she was consumptive, and that it was only an affair of a few years. I never knew it was Lily Martin. Why, she must have been married to him when she first came to us! Help!"

There was consternation in his accents. Olwen looked into the depths of his eyes, so limpid and boyish. How could she ever have thought this man untrustworthy?

After a while she produced the burnt envelope, telling him where his mother had found it.

To her relief, he seemed to attach small importance to it.

"If she is really Wolf's wife," he said absently, "that explains things. She wrote Mrs. Ninian Guyse on the back of a photo which she must have left by accident in the pages of a book. I thought when I found it that it was just her confounded cheek; but she had right on her side. You know that Ninian is the typical Guyse name in our senior branch of the family. Thus my father named his twin sons Ninian Wilfrid and Wilfrid Ninian respectively, so that if one of us got knocked out the survivor might still be a Ninian Guyse. Wolf's wife might almost as well call herself Mrs. Ninian Guyse as you might. As he wanted the thing kept dark, he would be very likely to use his other name. It was an obvious precaution. As to the writing, Wolf and I write so alike that our hands are often mistaken for one another. There is, however, one letter that we make quite differently, and that is our initial N. I always write it plain like a printed N, and Wolf writes it as on this address. My mother might not notice that, because I am always with her and she doesn't often see my signature. But I think I could easily convince any impartial person that I didn't write that address." He felt in his pocket, brought out some letters from his brother addressed to himself, and showed the initial N exactly as it appeared on the letter. Then he went to the bureau and fetched out a letter which he had just written to a local correspondent. The N at the foot, where his signature appeared, was, as he had said, quite different. "Rather tiresome, isn't it, that I can only clear myself in Madam's eyes by incriminating Wolf? She thinks a hundred times more of him than she does of me. I can't tell tales of him."

She contemplated his serious, absorbed face, and laughed out aloud in the completeness of her relief. "Oh, Nin," said she, "you are a darling!"

His expression changed like lightning to its most wicked twinkle.

"Come," he said, "we're getting on. That's the very first pretty name you ever called me—are you aware of that, my porcelain rogue?"

"I prefer being a school-marm and a white crane and a blue thing with a red nose to any amount of darlings," was her contented reply.

Madam's condition changed for the better that evening. The following afternoon, when the Colonel arrived, he found her much improved.

He had been a good deal mystified, upon his arrival at Picton Bars, to find Miss Innes's Rolls-Royce and chauffeur awaiting him.

Goddard told him that the young lady was staying at the Pele, and thus he was more or less prepared for the state of affairs which he found upon arrival.

Ninian and Olwen were having tea in the banqueting-hall. They were sitting in the oriel, and at the moment of his entry, Ninian was wholly absorbed in demonstrating that he could fold his fiancée's hand within his own, so that it was completely concealed, and could be withdrawn without his unlocking a single finger.

Olwen received her future brother-in-law graciously enough, but with a new reserve in her manner which he felt uncomfortably.

Ninian explained to him their plan, which was to be married at once without any kind of pomp, so that he might take his bride to Italy or the Pyrenees until his health was thoroughly re-established.

"I shall invite nobody but my grandfather and my two unmarried aunts," said Olwen; "but there is one person whose presence I particularly desire, and that is your wife, Wilfrid."

"My wife!" he said, with first a flash of anger, and then a hesitation, a dark look at his twin. There was a pause, which they left it to him to break.

"I had no idea that my brother knew," he said at last, very coldly.

"He did not until I told him," replied Miss Innes. "Your wife wrote to me. I feel sure that she wrote for my sake, not for her own. It happened that I had been kind to some cousin of hers, and she thought she ought to warn me that you were not free."

His eyes flashed. "If I had been free, what price Ninian's chance?" he asked, with a sneer.

"No human creature has a chance as long as Nin is above ground," was her tender reply. "I only liked talking to you because every now and then you are so astonishingly like him—superficially."

"Well, Nin, I congratulate you, from the bottom of my heart," said Wolf, in a softer tone.

"I feel as if, seeing that I am going to be one of the family, I ought to scold you, Wolf," said Olwen. "But somehow I can't. I feel too happy to scold. However, there is one thing I must do, and that is, to set you a penance. I want you to go upstairs to Madam—she is much better this evening—and tell her, quite quietly and simply, that Lily is your wife. You owe this to Ninian, for she is quite sure that it is he who has done what you have done. I must tell you frankly that, until you do this, and acknowledge your wife, you and I won't be friends."

Ninian interposed, in a bashful, muttering fashion. "Don't ask him to tell her! She loves him best, and it doesn't hurt her half as much to think I have done a shabby thing as it would to think that he had."

Olwen lifted her gaze to the Colonel's moody, handsome face. Her eyes were alight with joy and pride in her lover. "You hear that, Wolf?" she asked a little chokily. "That's your brother—your twin; won't you show yourself worthy of him? Must all the generosity be his to the very end?"

His look dwelt upon her, half resentment, half admiration. "By jove, Ninian, you and I are going to be shown our places now, aren't we?" he sneered.

"Always told her she was a school-marm," replied Nin, his mouth curved sideways into his most crooked grin.

Wolf turned away, with an envious look under his eyelashes. He walked the length of the room, came slowly back half-way, wavered a minute, then went out, closing the door behind him.

"It won't hurt her, Nin," said Olwen gently; "she likes Lily, and she has brooded for so long over what she imagined to be your deceit. It is best to tell her the truth, and then I can write to Lily to-night and invite her to the wedding."

"Trust you to manage it all," remarked he, with a chuckle of intense satisfaction.

THE END