he paper again.

What was wrong with the light? He looked at the clock, and read it with
some difficulty. Close on four only, and the September sun was shining
brightly outside. It was his eyes, he supposed, that were not quite
normal Very likely. A nervous shock must, of course, show itself in a
variety of ways. At any rate, he found reading difficult, and the paper
slid away.

The pain, however, would not let him doze. He looked helplessly round
the room, feeling depressed and wretched. Why were his mother and Alicia
out so long? They neglected and forgot him. Yet he could not but
remember that they had both devoted themselves to him in the morning,
had read to him and written for him, and he had not been a very grateful
patient. He recalled, with bitterness, the look of smiling relief with
which Alicia had sprung up at the sound of the luncheon-bell, dropping
the book from which she had been reading aloud, and the little song he
had heard her humming in the corridor as she passed his door on her way
down-stairs.

_She_ was in no pain physical or mental, and she had probably no
conception of what he had endured these six days and nights. But one
would have thought that mere instinctive sympathy with the man to whom
she was secretly engaged.

For they were secretly engaged. It was during one of their early drives,
in the canvassing of the first election, that he had lost his head one
June afternoon, as they found themselves alone, crossing a beech wood on
one of the private roads of the Tallyn estate; the groom having been
despatched on a message to a farm-house. Alicia was in her most daring
and provocative mood, tormenting and flattering him by turns; the
reflections from her rose-colored parasol dappling her pale skin with
warm color; her beautiful ungloved hands and arms, bare to the elbow,
teasing the senses of the man beside her. Suddenly he had thrown his arm
round her, and crushed her to him, kissing the smooth cool face and the
dazzling hair. And she had nestled up to him and laughed--not the least
abashed or astonished; so that even then, through his excitement, there
had struck a renewed and sharp speculation as to her twenty-four hours'
engagement to the Curate, in the spring of the year; as to the
privileges she must have allowed him; and no doubt to others before him.

At that time, it was tacitly understood between them that no engagement
could be announced. Alicia was well aware that Brookshire was