ess--all through my life, all through all conceivable and
inconceivable lives, since before the world began?"

Katharine's breath came with a fluttering sigh. She let her head fall
back against his shoulder. Her eyes closed involuntarily. She loved
these fond exaggerations--as what woman does not who has had the good
fortune to hear them? They pierced her with a delicious pain;
and--perhaps therefore, perhaps not unwisely--she believed them true.

"Are you tired?" he asked presently.

Katherine looked up smiling, and shook her head.

"Not too tired to be up early to-morrow morning and come out with me to
see the horses galloped? Sultan will give you no trouble. He is
well-seasoned and merely looks on at things in general with intelligent
interest, goes like a lamb and stands like a rock."

While her husband was speaking Katherine straightened herself up, and
moved a little from him though still holding his hand. Her languor
passed, and her eyes grew large and black.

"I think, perhaps, I had better not go to-morrow, Dick," she said
slowly.

"Ah! you are tired, you poor dear. No wonder, after the week's work you
have had. Another day will do just as well. Only I want you to come out
sometimes in the first blush of the morning, before the day has had
time to grow commonplace, while the gossamers are still hung with dew,
and the mists are in hollows, and the horses are heady from the fresh
air and the light. You will like it all, Kitty. It is rather inspiring.
But it will keep. To-morrow I'll let you rest in peace."

"Oh no! it is not that," Katherine said quickly. The importunate
thought was upon her again, clamouring, not only to be recognised, but
fairly owned to and permitted to pass the doors of speech. And a
certain modesty made her shrink from this. To know something in the
secret of your own heart, or to tell it, thereby making it a hard
concrete fact, outside yourself, over which, in a sense, you cease to
have control, are two such very different matters! Katherine trembled
on the edge of her confession, though that to be confessed was, after
all, but the natural crown of her love.

"I think I ought not to ride now--for a time, Dick." All the blood
rushed into her face and throat, and then ebbed, leaving her very white
in the growing darkness.--"You have given me a child," she said.

CHAPTER III

TOUCHING MATTERS CLERICAL AND CONTROVERSIAL

Brockhurst had rarely appeared more blessed by spaci