she said.

So the bowsprit of the 'Adhemar' was turned homewards; and with every
league of water they left behind them his excitement and impatience
seemed to grow.

"I can't wait to show it to you, Honora--to see you in it," he
exclaimed. "I have so long pictured you there, and our life as it will
be."

CHAPTER XII. THE ENTRANCE INTO EDEN

They had travelled through the night, and in the early morning left the
express at a junction. Honora sat in the straight-backed seat of the
smaller train with parted lips and beating heart, gazing now and again
at the pearly mists rising from the little river valley they were
climbing. Chiltern was like a schoolboy.

"We'll soon be there," he cried, but it was nearly nine o'clock when
they reached the Gothic station that marked the end of the line. It
was a Chiltern line, he told her, and she was already within the feudal
domain. Time indeed that she awoke! She reached the platform to confront
a group of upturned, staring faces, and for the moment her courage
failed her. Somehow, with Chiltern's help, she made her way to a waiting
omnibus backed up against the boards. The footman touched his hat, the
grey-headed coachman saluted, and they got in. As the horses started off
at a quick trot, Honora saw that the group on the station platform had
with one consent swung about to stare after them.

They passed through the main street of the town, lined with plate-glass
windows and lively signs, and already bustling with the business of the
day, through humbler thoroughfares, and presently rumbled over a bridge
that spanned a rushing stream confined between the foundation walls of
mills. Hundreds of yards of mills stretched away on either side; mills
with windows wide open, and within them Honora heard the clicking and
roaring of machinery, and saw the men and women at their daily tasks.
Life was a strange thing that they should be doing this while she should
be going to live in luxury at a great country place. On one of the walls
she read the legend Chiltern and Company.

"They still keep our name," said Hugh, "although they are in the trust."

He pointed out to her, with an air of pride, every landmark by the
roadside. In future they were to have a new meaning--they were to be
shared with her. And he spoke of the times--as child and youth, home
from the seashore or college, he had driven over the same road. It wound
to the left, behind the mills, threaded a village of neat