, he turned, and she heard
his footsteps echoing across the hall, then dying away on the threshold
of the door beyond. Anon the door itself closed to with a dull bang
which seemed to find an echo in her heart like the tolling of a passing
bell.

Then only did she raise her head, and look about her. The hall was
deserted and seemed infinitely lonely, silent, and grim. The young
girl-wife, who had just found a friend only to lose him again, called
out in mute appeal to this old house, the oak-covered walls, the very
stones themselves, for sympathy.

She was so infinitely, so immeasurably lonely, with that awful,
irretrievable day at Dover behind her, with all its dreariness, its
silent solemnity, its weird finish in the vestry, the ring upon her
finger, her troth plighted to a man whom she feared and no longer loved.

Oh! the pity of it all! the broken young life! the vanished dreams!

Sue bent her head down upon her hands, her lips touched her own fingers
there where her friend's had rested in gratitude and love, and she
cried, cried like a broken-hearted woman, cried for her lost illusions,
and the end of her brief romance!

CHAPTER XXVII

LADY SUE'S FORTUNE

Less than an hour later four people were assembled in the small
withdrawing-room of Acol Court.

Master Skyffington sat behind a central table, a little pompous of
manner, clad in sober black with well-starched linen cuffs and collar,
his scanty hair closely cropped, his thin hands fingering with assurance
and perfect calm the various documents laid out before him. Near him Sir
Marmaduke de Chavasse, sitting with his back to the dim November light,
which vainly strove to penetrate the tiny glass panes of the casement
windows.

In a more remote corner of the room sat Editha de Chavasse, vainly
trying to conceal the agitation which her trembling hands, her quivering
face and restless eyes persistently betrayed. And beside the central
table, near Master Skyffington and facing Sir Marmaduke, was Lady
Susannah Aldmarshe, only daughter and heiress of the late Earl of Dover,
this day aged twenty-one years, and about to receive from the hands of
her legal guardians the vast fortune which her father had bequeathed to
her, and which was to become absolutely hers this day to dispose of as
she list.

"And now, my dear child," said Master Skyffington with due solemnity,
when he had disposed a number of documents and papers in methodical
order upon the tabl