lty to
her, and his death would be a relief. It would, indeed, in one aspect be
a relief to her now, if she were so ashamed of him as she had appeared to
be that day. Were he dead, this little episode with him would fade away
like a dream.

Mr. Everard was a good-hearted man at bottom, but to take his enraged
offer seriously was impossible. Obviously it was hotly made in his first
bitterness at what he had heard. The least thing that he could do would
be to go away and never trouble her more. To travel and learn and come
back in two years, as mapped out in their first sanguine scheme, required
a staunch heart on her side, if the necessary expenditure of time and
money were to be afterwards justified; and it were folly to calculate on
that when he had seen to-day that her heart was failing her already. To
travel and disappear and not be heard of for many years would be a far
more independent stroke, and it would leave her entirely unfettered.
Perhaps he might rival in this kind the accomplished Mr. Bellston, of
whose journeyings he had heard so much.

He sat and sat, and the fog rose out of the river, enveloping him like a
fleece; first his feet and knees, then his arms and body, and finally
submerging his head. When he had come to a decision he went up again
into the homestead. He would be independent, if he died for it, and he
would free Christine. Exile was the only course. The first step was to
inform his uncle of his determination.

Two days later Nicholas was on the same spot in the mead, at almost the
same hour of eve. But there was no fog now; a blusterous autumn wind had
ousted the still, golden days and misty nights; and he was going, full of
purpose, in the opposite direction. When he had last entered the mead he
was an inhabitant of the Froom valley; in forty-eight hours he had
severed himself from that spot as completely as if he had never belonged
to it. All that appertained to him in the Froom valley now was
circumscribed by the portmanteau in his hand.

In making his preparations for departure he had unconsciously held a
faint, foolish hope that she would communicate with him and make up their
estrangement in some soft womanly way. But she had given no signal, and
it was too evident to him that her latest mood had grown to be her fixed
one, proving how well founded had been his impulse to set her free.

He entered the Sallows, found his way in the dark to the garden-door of
the house, s