hen they did not talk at all. The intimacy
between them made conversation unnecessary, and Lucas Errol's silence was
as easy as his speech.

"You'll take care of yourself," he said once, "or I shan't be easy
about you."

And, when she had promised that: "And you'll look us up as often as
you find you can. P'r'aps if you can't come very often you'll manage
to write."

But he made no direct reference to her husband's return. His sympathy
neither sought nor needed expression in words.

Neither did he speak of himself. He only at parting held her hand very
closely for several silent seconds. And Anne went away with a hushed
feeling at her heart as if he had invoked a benediction.

Back to her home she went, strangely quiet and at peace. She had thought
that visit to Baronmead would have been painful to her. She had expected
to suffer afresh. But it was instead as if a healing hand had been laid
upon her, and as she went she thought no more of Nap, the savage, the
sudden, the terrible; but of Lucas, the gentle, the patient, the
chivalrous, who had won and would for ever keep her perfect trust.

The light of a golden evening lay upon the Manor as she entered. It was
wonderfully quiet. She went in by the French windows that led into the
drawing-room, and here, tempted by an impulse that had not moved her for
long, she sat down at the piano and began very softly to play.

She had not touched the keys since her last visit to Baronmead. She
wondered, as idly she suffered her fingers to wander, how long it would
be before she played again.

Yet it was hard to believe, sitting there in the quiet evening light,
that the next day would witness her return to bondage, that bondage that
had so cruelly galled her, the very thought of which had at one time
filled her with repulsion. But her feelings had undergone a change of
late. She could not feel that the old burden would ever return upon her.
She had been emancipated too long. Her womanhood had developed too much
during those months of liberty. No, it could never be the same. Patient
and faithful wife she would still be. She was ready to devote herself
ungrudgingly, without reservation, to her invalid husband. But his slave
she would never be again. She had overcome her repugnance; she was
willing to serve. But never again would he compel. The days of his
tyranny were for ever gone.

It was no easy path that lay before her, but she had not forgotten how
narrowly she had esc