rank the freshness
and fragrance. And it seemed to her that this ancient grange, perched on
the cliff-ledge in the tremendous shadow of Herion Castle, looking across
the restless grey-blue waters of Nantmadoc Bay to St. Tirlan's Roads, was
an ideal place to spend a honeymoon in, supposing you loved the man you
had married, and were loved by him?

Her bosom heaved and her wild heart fell to throbbing. A blush burned over
her, and she drove the thought away. It came back, whispering like a guest
who wishes not to be dismissed. It pleaded and urged and compelled.
Something like a strong hand closed upon her heart and drew her, drew
her.... A voice called to her in the silence that was only broken by the
voices of birds, and the rustling of wind-stirred leaves, and the crying
of the gulls above the white restless breakers. And the voice was Owen's.

How strangely he had looked and spoken in that last moment of their
parting! It came back in every detail for the hundredth time, as she
leaned her white arms upon the window-sill and looked out with wistful
eyes upon the beauty of the blossoming world.

"Good-bye, good-bye! Be happy--and forget!"

The train had begun to move as he uttered the words He had gripped her
hand painfully and released it. As he drew his arm sharply away, a button,
hanging loosely by a thread or two, became detached from his coat-cuff,
and fell upon the rubber matting of the corridor. She was conscious of the
button as Saxham and the crowded, grimy platform receded from her view.
And before she went back to her seat in the compartment that had been
reserved for herself and her fellow-travellers, she picked up the tiny
disc of black horn, and secretly kissed it, and slipped it into her purse.
She was silent and preoccupied during the eleven hours' journey, turning
over and over in her mind, mentally repeating with every shade of
expression that could vary their meaning, Saxham's strange words of
farewell.

She repeated them now aloud. They were tossed to and fro in her heart on
waves of wonder and regret and apprehension. Did Owen really believe that
to be happy she must forget him? Did he comprehend that she had long
arrived at the conclusion that this loveless, joyless companionship,
mocked by the name of marriage, was a miserable mistake?

He had never been under any illusion as concerned it. He had accepted the
iron terms of the contract she offered him with open eyes and full
knowledge. She h