ol, half-darkened sitting-room. By one of these Mona was
standing. She turned, as with an effort, jerkily, constrainedly, and
her eyes met his.

All was over.

What her countenance expressed it would have been difficult to define.
What it did not express was that loving, eager sympathy, that proud,
fearless trust, which should range itself beside him in defiance of the
whole world, such as he had scarcely expected, yet still owned a
deep-down hope that he might find there.

All was over.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

While this trial and verdict, swift as a lightning flash, was going on,
Suffield had been bustling about the room with the blundering,
ostentatious tactlessness of a not very clever man under awkward
circumstances, who has more than half lost his head; under cover of
which bustle Mona slipped away and was gone, but ere vanishing she left
behind a whisper:

"Soon. At the willows."

"Hallo, Musgrave! I thought Grace was here," cried Suffield, turning.
"Have a glass of grog after your ride, eh?"

"No thanks."

"What? Did you say you wouldn't? By the way, you haven't off-saddled,"
glimpsing through the open door the other's horse still standing in
front of the _stoep_.

"I'm not going to off-saddle," said Roden. "I don't think I can stay
very long."

Suffield hardly knew what to answer, so he fired off volleys of
commonplaces, which, treading on each other's heels, soon merged into
the most drivelling of incoherences. Roden, watching him, felt moved to
pity and contempt: pity for the man who could make so gratuitous an ass
of himself, contempt for one whose "friendship" thus collapsed at the
first knock, and that knock an outside one.

"If you don't mind, Suffield, I rather want to have a word or two with
Miss Ridsdale," he said at last. "I think I saw her strolling in the
direction of the willows."

"Certainly, certainly; you're sure to find her there," assented Suffield
effusively. "When you come back you'll perhaps change your mind about
not off-saddling."

Roden did not hurry as he took his way along that well-known path. His
gait to the superficial observer was that of a bored lounger, strolling
to kill time; and as he caught the glimpse of a white dress beneath the
leafy canopy in front, so far from quickening his pace, he deliberately
halted, and affected to pick up and examine a leaf or a pebble which lay
in the path. And as he