pure, as if no atmosphere of turmoil and taint had ruffled or
soiled it. It made Miss Baring's fresh, clear complexion a shade too
bright in the carmine, which took off the greyness of the flaxen hue and
relieved the cold and steel-like gleam in her grey-blue eyes. The
features of the face were fine and regular, like Mr. Baring's; but
instead of the handsome, aristocratic, relentless aquiline nose, which
was the most striking feature in the gentleman's face, the lady's was a
modified Greek nose, broad enough at the base slightly to spoil its
beauty but largely to increase its intellectual significance.

The "he" of the conversation, who was not to last ten years, was Gervase
Norgate of Ashpound--a poor, impulsive, weak-willed, fast-living young
neighbouring squire. Unluckily for himself, he had been early left his
own master, and had ridden post-haste to the dogs ever since. Suddenly
he had taken it into his muddled head to pull up in his career, and, if
need be, to chain and padlock, hedge and barricade himself with a wife
and family, before Ashpound should be swallowed up by hungry creditors,
and he had hurried himself into a forlorn grave.

Mr. Baring was willing to let him off as a pigeon to be plucked, and to
use him instead as an unconscious decoy-duck in getting rid of Die; not
that Mr. Baring had an unnatural aversion to his daughter, but that she
was a drag upon him both for the present and the future. But Die, after
one night's reflection, accepted Gervase Norgate to escape worse evil,
having neither brother nor sister nor friend who would aid her. What Die
did on that night; whether she merely "slept on the proposal," like a
wise, well-in-hand, self-controlled woman; whether she outwatched the
moon, plying herself with arguments, forcing herself to overcome her
deadly sick loathing at the leap, nobody knows. If Die had learned
anything worth retaining, in the shifts and shams of her life, it was
perfect reticence. The result was that Gervase Norgate was coming to woo
as an accepted wooer at Newton-le-Moor on the evening of the summer day
when Mr. Baring confidentially assured the bride that the bridegroom
would not last ten years.

Newton-le-Moor was what its name suggested, an estate won from the
southern moors by other and worthier adventurers than John Fitzwilliam
Baring. In his hands the place was drifting back to the original
moorland. Everything, except the stables and kennels, had been suffered
to g