ny reply. Yes, he must go. And mingled with
that reluctance and nameless apprehension which he felt at the thought
of returning into her neighbourhood, he was acutely conscious, all the
time, of a certain vague but sweet pleasure at the thought that fate
had so ordained it. Perhaps it would be necessary for him to see
her! A thrill of pleasure passed through him at the thought, followed
almost immediately by a reaction of keen and bitter disgust with
himself. He set his teeth, and quite unconsciously dug his spurs into
his horse's sides, with the natural result that she reared up, almost
unseating him, and then plunged forward. He had to gallop her along
the road for a few hundred yards, and then turned round and rejoined
Lady May. Fortunately she had not seen the commencement of the little
episode.

"Whatever was the matter?" she asked.

"I fancy my spurs must have pricked her," he said apologetically. "I
was riding quite carelessly."

"Well, please don't let it happen again," she begged, eyeing his
mare's flanks suspiciously. "Dandy is very tired now, and is generally
good tempered; but I don't think he would stand much of that sort of
thing."

"I'm really very sorry," he said.

She nodded. "All right. And now, what do you think of my plan? Are you
going to London?"

"I think your plan is a very good one indeed, and I shall run up
to town to-morrow," he said. "It is very good of you to be so
interested."

He looked down into her face, a fair, sweet face it was, and then
glanced away over the bare moorland which stretched on one side of
them. It was a late November afternoon, and a faint yellow light
was lingering in the west, where the sun had just set, colouring the
clouds which stretched across the sky in long, level streaks. A fresh,
healthy breeze, strong with the perfume of the sea, blew in their
teeth, and afar off they could hear the waves dashing against the
iron-bound line of northern cliffs. Inland, the country was more
cultivated, but hilly and broken up with masses of lichen-covered
rock, and little clumps of thin fir trees. He knew the scenery so
well. The rugged, barren country, with its great stretches of moorland
and little patches of cultivated land, with its silent tarns, its
desolation, and the ever-varying music of the sea, they all meant home
to him, and he loved them. It had always been so, and yet he felt it
at that moment as he had never felt it before. The prospect of that
journey t