o study her idol--a process
dangerous to idols. He, now that she seemed to have relinquished the
painful subject, drew to her, and as one who wished to smooth a foregone
roughness, murmured: "God's rarest blessing is, after all, a good woman!
My Emmeline bears her sleepless night well. She does not shame the day."
He gazed down on her with a fondling tenderness.

"I could bear many, many!" she replied, meeting his eyes, "and you
would see me look better and better, if... if only..." but she had no
encouragement to end the sentence.

Perhaps he wanted some mute form of consolation; perhaps the handsome
placid features of the dark-eyed dame touched him: at any rate their
Platonism was advanced by his putting an arm about her. She felt the arm
and talked of the morning.

Thus proximate, they by and by both heard something very like a groan
behind them, and looking round, beheld the Saurian eye. Lady Blandish
smiled, but the baronet's discomposure was not to be concealed. By a
strange fatality every stage of their innocent loves was certain to have
a human beholder.

"Oh, I'm sure I beg pardon," Benson mumbled, arresting his head in a
melancholy pendulosity. He was ordered out of the room.

"And I think I shall follow him, and try to get forty winks," said Lady
Blandish. They parted with a quiet squeeze of hands.

The baronet then called in Benson.

"Get me my breakfast as soon as you can," he said, regardless of the
aspect of injured conscience Benson sombrely presented to him. "I am
going to town early. And, Benson," he added, "you will also go to town
this afternoon, or to-morrow, if it suits you, and take your book with
you to Mr. Thompson. You will not return here. A provision will be made
for you. You can go."

The heavy butler essayed to speak, but the tremendous blow and the
baronet's gesture choked him. At the door he made another effort which
shook the rolls of his loose skin pitiably. An impatient signal sent
him out dumb,--and Raynham was quit of the one believer in the Great
Shaddock dogma.

CHAPTER XXXIV

It was the month of July. The Solent ran up green waves before a
full-blowing South-wester. Gay little yachts bounded out like foam, and
flashed their sails, light as sea-nymphs. A crown of deep Summer blue
topped the flying mountains of cloud.

By an open window that looked on the brine through nodding roses, our
young bridal pair were at breakfast, regaling worthily, both of them.
Had t