eformity, you have
shrunk a hundred times."

"She has thought of all that," Honoria answered calmly. "But she has
thought of this too,--that, going up and down the world to find the
most excellent thing in it, she has found this thing, love. And so to
her, Richard, your crippling has come to be dearer than any other man's
wholeness. Your wrong-doings--may God forgive her--dearer than any
other man's virtue. Your virtues so wholly beautiful that--that----"

The tears came into her eyes, her lips quivered, she backed away a
little from rider and horse.

"Richard," she cried fiercely, "if you don't care for me, if you don't
want me, be honourable, tell me so straight out and let us have done
with it! I am strong enough, I am man enough, for that. For heaven's
sake don't take me out of pity. I would never forgive you. There's a
good deal of us both, one way and another, and we should give each
other a hell of a time if I was in love and you were not. But"--she put
her hand on the peak of that very ugly saddle again--"but, if you do
care, here I am. I have never failed any one yet. I will never fail
you. I am yours body and soul. Marry me," she said.

CHAPTER XI

IN WHICH RICHARD CALMADY BIDS THE LONG-SUFFERING READER FAREWELL

The midsummer dusk had fallen, drawing its soft, dim mantle over the
face of the land. The white light walked the northern sky from west to
east. A nightingale sang in the big, Portugal laurel at the corner of
the troco-ground, and was answered by another singer from the coppice,
across the valley, bordering the trout stream that feeds the Long
Water. A fox barked sharply out in the Warren. Beetles droned, flying
conspicuously upright, straight on end, through the warm air. The
churring of the night-jars, as they flitted hither and thither over the
beds of bracken and dog-roses, like gigantic moths, on quick, silent
wings, formed a continuous accompaniment, as of a spinning-wheel, to
the other sounds. And Dick Ormiston laughed consumedly, doubling
himself together now and again and holding his slim sides in effort to
moderate his explosive merriment. He was in uproarious spirits.--Back
from school to-day, and that nearly a month earlier than could by the
most favourable process of calculation have been anticipated, thanks to
development of measles on the part of some much-to-be-commended
school-fellows. How he blessed those praiseworthy young sufferers! And
how he laughed, watching the