in the grey twilight. Her gown was like no
other woman's; it was something between a Greek robe and a tea-gown,
of a dull orange hue, and her dusky hair was tied up with a bow of
ribbon of the same colour. Everything about her was strange; even
the faint perfume which hung about her clothes, and which brought him
sudden, swift memories of that moment when she had lain in his arms,
and his lips had met hers. Paul felt the colour steal into his pale
cheeks as he leaped to the ground, and passed his arm through his
horse's bridle.

"I will come, _cara mia_!" he said softly.

She clasped her hands through his other arm, and whispered something
in his ear, as they turned up the avenue together. Just then the
sound of horses' hoofs in the road made them both turn round. Captain
Westover and Lady May were riding by together, with their eyes fixed
upon Paul and his companion.

CHAPTER XIX.

"BLOOD CALLS ALOUD FOR BLOOD AND NOT FOR HANDS ENTWINED"

It was with a strange conflict of feelings that Paul, with Adrea
by his side, passed across the square, low hall of the cottage,
plentifully decorated with stags' heads and other sporting trophies,
and into the drawing-room. It was a room which had been built, too, of
quaint shape, made up of nooks and corners and recesses, and with dark
oak beams stretching right across the ceiling. The furniture was all
old-fashioned, and of different periods; but the general effect was
harmonious, though a trifle shabby. Paul knew it well! Many an evening
he had come in to tea there, after a cigar and a chat with the old
Major, and lounged in that low chair by Mrs. Harcourt's side. But it
scarcely seemed like the same room to him now. The Major and his wife
had been old-fashioned people, and their personality, and talk, and
surroundings, had created a sort of atmosphere which Paul had grown
almost to associate with the place. He missed it directly he entered
the room. What it was that had worked the change it was hard to tell.
Adrea had been far too charmed with its quaintness to seriously alter
anything. A little stiffness in the arrangement of the furniture had
been corrected, and the few antimacassars carefully removed; otherwise
nothing had been changed. The great bowls of yellow roses and
chrysanthemums, and the piles of modern books and music lying about,
might have been partly responsible for it; and the faint perfume which
he had grown to associate altogether with Adrea, and