d singularly exhilarating, were given off by
the damp mosses and the peaty moorland soil. The freedom of the forest,
the feeling of the noble horse under her, stirred Helen as with the
excitement of a mighty hunting, a positively royal sport. While the
close presence of the young man riding beside her sharpened the edge of
that excitement to a perfect keenness of pleasure.

"Ah, how glorious it all is!" she cried. "How glad I am that you asked
me to come here."

And she turned to Richard, looking at him as, since the first day of
their meeting, she had not, somehow, quite ventured to look.

"But, oh! dear me! please," she went on, "I know Mr. March is an angel,
a saint--but--but--_mea culpa, mea maxima culpa_, I don't want him to
show me those special treasures of yours. He'll take the life out of
them. I know it. And make them seem like things read of merely in a
learned book. Be very charming to me, Richard. Waste half an hour upon
me. Show me those moving relics yourself."

As she spoke, momentary suspicion rose in Dickie's eyes. But she gazed
back unflinchingly, with the uttermost frankness, so that suspicion
died, giving place to the shy, yet triumphant, gladness of youth which
seeks and finds youth.

"Do, Richard, pray do," she repeated.

The young man had averted his face rather sharply, and both horses,
somehow, broke into a hand gallop.

"All right," he answered. "I'll arrange it. This evening, about six,
after tea? Will that suit you? I'll send you word."

Then the road had widened, permitting Mr. Ormiston to draw up to them
again. The remainder of the ride had been a little silent.

Yes, all that had been prettily done. Nor had the piece that followed
proved unworthy of the prelude. She ran over the scene in her mind now,
as she stood among the pocketing pea-fowl, and it caused her both mirth
and delightful little heats, in which the heart has a word to
say.--Madame de Vallorbes was ravished to feel her heart, just now and
again.--For, contradictory as it may seem, no game is perfect that has
not moments of seriousness.--She recalled the aspect of the Long
Gallery, as one of those civil, ever-present men-servants had opened
the door for her, and she waited a moment on the threshold. The true
artist is never in a hurry. The breadth of the great room immediately
before her showed very bright with candle-light and lamplight. But that
died away, through gradations of augmenting obscurity, until the
ext