was buried so deep in him and kept for her alone.
And if he did it again she would just know that it was only shyness and
pride. And he was not a brute and a beast, as he insisted. But suppose
she had chanced not to come out! Would she ever have lived through the
night? And she shivered.

"Are you cold, darling? Put on my coat."

It was put on her in spite of all effort to prevent him. Never was
anything so warm, so delicious, wrapping her in something more than
Harris tweed. And the hall clock struck--Two!

She could just see his face in the glimmer that filtered from the
skylight at the top. And she felt that he was learning her, learning all
that she had to give him, learning the trust that was shining through
her eyes. There was just enough light for them to realize the old house
watching from below and from above--a glint on the dark floor there,
on the dark wall here; a blackness that seemed to be inhabited by some
spirit, so that their hands clutched and twitched, when the tiny, tiny
noises of Time, playing in wood and stone, clicked out.

That stare of the old house, with all its knowledge of lives past, of
youth and kisses spent and gone, of hopes spun and faiths abashed, the
old house cynical, stirred in them desire to clutch each other close and
feel the thrill of peering out together into mystery that must hold
for them so much of love and joy and trouble! And suddenly she put her
fingers to his face, passed them softly, clingingly, over his hair,
forehead, eyes, traced the sharp cheek-bones down to his jaw, round
by the hard chin up to his lips, over the straight bone of his nose,
lingering, back, to his eyes again.

"Now, if I go blind, I shall know you. Give me one kiss, Derek. You MUST
be tired."

Buried in the old dark house that kiss lasted long; then, tiptoeing--she
in front--pausing at every creak, holding breath, they stole up to their
rooms. And the clock struck--Three!

CHAPTER XVI

Felix (nothing if not modern) had succumbed already to the feeling that
youth ruled the roost. Whatever his misgivings, his and Flora's sense of
loss, Nedda must be given a free hand! Derek gave no outward show of his
condition, and but for his little daughter's happy serenity Felix would
have thought as she had thought that first night. He had a feeling that
his nephew rather despised one so soaked in mildness and reputation as
Felix Freeland; and he got on better with Sheila, not because she was
milder