it was flooded by spring sunshine--not more radiant than her face.
Now a solitary lamp made a faint spot of light amid the shadows of the
panelled walls. He and Mrs. Colwood spoke almost in whispers. The old
house, generally so winning and sympathetic, seemed to hold itself
silent and aloof--as though in this touch of calamity the living were no
longer its master and the dead generations woke. And, up-stairs, Diana
lay perhaps in her white bed, miserable and alone, not knowing that he
was there, within a few yards of her.

Mrs. Colwood noiselessly opened a garden door and so dismissed him. It
was moonlight outside, and instead of returning to the inn he took the
road up the hill to the crest of the encircling down. Diverging a little
to the left, he found himself on the open hill-side, at a point
commanding the village and Beechcote itself, ringed by its ancient
woods. In the village two dim lights, far apart, were visible; lights,
he thought, of sickness or of birth?--for the poor sleep early. One of
the Beechcote windows shone with a dim illumination. Was she there, and
sleepless? The sky was full of light; the blanched chalk down on which
he stood ran northward in a shining curve, bare in the moon; but in the
hollow below, and on the horizon, the dark huddled woods kept watch,
guarding the secrets of night. The owls were calling in the trees
behind him--some in faint prolonged cry, one in a sharp shrieking note.
And at whiles a train rushed upon the ear, held it, and died away; or a
breeze crept among the dead beech leaves at his feet. Otherwise not a
sound or show of life; Marsham was alone with night and himself.

Twenty-four hours--little more--since on that same hill-side he had held
Diana in his arms in the first rapture of love. What was it that had
changed? How was it--for he was frank with himself--that the love which
had been then the top and completion of his life, the angel of all
good-fortune within and without, had become now, to some extent, a
burden to be borne, an obligation to be met?

Certainly, he loved her well. But she came to him now, bringing as her
marriage portion, not easy joy and success, the full years of prosperity
and ambition, but poverty, effort, a certain measure of disgrace, and
the perpetual presence of a ghastly and heart-breaking memory. He shrank
from this last in a positive and sharp impatience. Why should Juliet
Sparling's crime affect him?--depress the vigor and cheerfulness