c bushes flanked the
garden, and a huge lime-tree in the adjoining field sighed and rustled,
or on still days let forth the drowsy hum of countless small dusky bees
who frequented that green hostelry.

He found her altering a dress, sitting over it in her peculiar delicate
fashion--as if all objects whatsoever, dresses, flowers, books, music,
required from her the same sympathy.

He had come from a long day's electioneering, had been heckled at two
meetings, and was still sore from the experience. To watch her, to be
soothed, and ministered to by her had never been so restful; and
stretched out in a long chair he listened to her playing.

Over the hill a Pierrot moon was slowly moving up in a sky the colour of
grey irises. And in a sort of trance Miltoun stared at the burnt-out
star, travelling in bright pallor.

Across the moor a sea of shallow mist was rolling; and the trees in the
valley, like browsing cattle, stood knee-deep in whiteness, with all the
air above them wan from an innumerable rain as of moondust, falling into
that white sea. Then the moon passed behind the lime-tree, so that a
great lighted Chinese lantern seemed to hang blue-black from the sky.

Suddenly, jarring and shivering the music, came a sound of hooting. It
swelled, died away, and swelled again.

Miltoun rose.

"That has spoiled my vision," he said. "Mrs. Noel, I have something I
want to say." But looking down at her, sitting so still, with her hands
resting on the keys, he was silent in sheer adoration.

A voice from the door ejaculated:

"Oh! ma'am--oh! my lord! They're devilling a gentleman on the green!"

CHAPTER VI

When the immortal Don set out to ring all the bells of merriment, he was
followed by one clown. Charles Courtier on the other hand had always
been accompanied by thousands, who really could not understand the
conduct of this man with no commercial sense. But though he puzzled his
contemporaries, they did not exactly laugh at him, because it was
reported that he had really killed some men, and loved some women. They
found such a combination irresistible, when coupled with an appearance
both vigorous and gallant. The son of an Oxfordshire clergyman, and
mounted on a lost cause, he had been riding through the world ever since
he was eighteen, without once getting out of the saddle. The secret of
this endurance lay perhaps in his unconsciousness that he was in the
saddle at all. It was as much his na