dow, he turned round to fire a
parting shot.

"What I meant, Lord Miltoun, was that your class is the driest and most
practical in the State--it's odd if it doesn't save you from a poet's
dreams. Good-night!" He passed out on to the lawn, and vanished.

The young man sat unmoving; the glow of the fire had caught his face, so
that a spirit seemed clinging round his lips, gleaming out of his eyes.
Suddenly he said:

"Do you believe that, Mrs. Noel?"

For answer Audrey Noel smiled, then rose and went over to the window.

"Look at my dear toad! It comes here every evening!" On a flagstone of
the verandah, in the centre of the stream of lamplight, sat a little
golden toad. As Miltoun came to look, it waddled to one side, and
vanished.

"How peaceful your garden is!" he said; then taking her hand, he very
gently raised it to his lips, and followed his opponent out into the
darkness.

Truly peace brooded over that garden. The Night seemed listening--all
lights out, all hearts at rest. It watched, with a little white star for
every tree, and roof, and slumbering tired flower, as a mother watches
her sleeping child, leaning above him and counting with her love every
hair of his head, and all his tiny tremors.

Argument seemed child's babble indeed under the smile of Night. And the
face of the woman, left alone at her window, was a little like the face
of this warm, sweet night. It was sensitive, harmonious; and its harmony
was not, as in some faces, cold--but seemed to tremble and glow and
flutter, as though it were a spirit which had found its place of resting.

In her garden,--all velvety grey, with black shadows beneath the
yew-trees, the white flowers alone seemed to be awake, and to look at her
wistfully. The trees stood dark and still. Not even the night birds
stirred. Alone, the little stream down in the bottom raised its voice,
privileged when day voices were hushed.

It was not in Audrey Noel to deny herself to any spirit that was abroad;
to repel was an art she did not practise. But this night, though the
Spirit of Peace hovered so near, she did not seem to know it. Her hands
trembled, her cheeks were burning; her breast heaved, and sighs fluttered
from her lips, just parted.

CHAPTER V

Eustace Cardoc, Viscount Miltoun, had lived a very lonely life, since he
first began to understand the peculiarities of existence. With the
exception of Clifton, his grandmother's 'majordomo,' he made