aining to himself that the thing he chiefly disliked in this robust,
warm-blooded young man was that when he met him striding about with his
gun over his shoulder and a keeper behind him, the almost unconscious
realisation of the unpleasant truth that he was striding over what might
prove to be his own acres, and shooting birds which in the future he
would himself possess the right to preserve, to invite other people to
shoot, to keep less favoured persons from shooting, as lord of the
Manor. This was a truth sufficiently irritating to accentuate all his
faults of character and breeding.

Emily, whose understanding of his nature developed with every day of her
life, grew into a comprehension of this by degrees. Perhaps her greatest
leap forward was taken on the day when, as he was driving her in the
cart which had picked her up on the moor, they saw Osborn tramping
through a cover with his gun. He did not see them, and a shade of
irritation swept Walderhurst's face.

"He seems to feel very much at home," he commented.

Then he was silent for a space during which he did not look pleased.

"If he were my son," he said, "it would be a different matter. If
Audrey's child had lived--"

He stopped and gave the tall mare a light cut with his whip. He was
evidently annoyed with himself for having spoken.

A hot wave of colour submerged Emily. She felt it rush over her whole
body. She turned her face away, hoping Walderhurst would not observe
her. This was the first time she had heard him utter his dead wife's
name. She had never heard anyone speak it. Audrey had evidently not been
a much-beloved or regretted person. But she had had a son.

Her primitive soul had scarcely dared to approach, even with awe, the
thought of such a possibility for herself. As in the past she had not
had the temerity to dream of herself as a woman who possessed
attractions likely to lead to marriage, so she was mentally restrained
in these days. There was something spinster-like in the tenor of her
thoughts. But she would have laid down her life for this dull man's
happiness. And of late she had more than once blamed herself for
accepting so much, unthinkingly.

"I did not realise things properly," she had said to herself in humble
pain. "I ought to have been a girl, young and strong and beautiful. His
sacrifice was too great, it was immense."

It had been nothing of the sort. He had pleased himself and done what
was likely to tend, and had