elled before her
engagement to you, Captain Decies, is announced. For her to go away
with you would be to invite criticism, and put herself hopelessly in
the wrong. She must not put herself in the wrong. Let me think! There
must be some way by which we can avoid that."

An exultation, hitherto unexperienced by her, inspired Honoria St.
Quentin. Her attitude was slightly unconventional. She sat on the stone
balustrade, with long-limbed, lazy grace, holding the girl's hand,
forgetful of herself, forgetful, in a degree, of appearances, concerned
only with the problem of rescue presented to her. The young man's
honest, wholehearted devotion, the young girl's struggle after duty and
her piteous desolation, nay, the close contact of that soft, maidenly
body that she had so lately held against her in closer, more intimate,
contact than she had ever held anything human before, aroused a new
class of sentiment, a new order of emotion, within her. She realised,
for the first time, the magnetism, the penetrating and poetic splendour
of human love. To witness the spectacle of it, to be thus in touch with
it, excited her almost as sailing a boat in a heavy sea, or riding to
hounds in a stiff country, excited her. And it followed that now, while
she perched aloft boy-like on the balustrade, her delicate beauty took
on a strange effulgence, a something spiritual, mysterious, elusive,
and yet dazzling as the moonlight which bathed her charming figure.
Seeing which, it must be owned that Lord Shotover's attitude towards
her ceased to be strictly fraternal, while the attractions of ladies
more fair and kind than wise paled very sensibly.

"I wish I hadn't been such a fool in my day, and run amuck with my
chances," he thought.

But Miss St. Quentin was altogether innocent of his observation or any
such thinkings. She looked up suddenly, her face irradiated by an
exquisite smile.

"Yes, I have it," she cried. "I see the way clear."

"But I can't tell them," broke in Lady Constance.

Honoria's hand closed down on hers reassuringly.

"No," she said, "you shall not tell them. And Lord Shotover shall not
tell them. Sir Richard Calmady shall tell Lord Fallowfeild that he
wishes to be released from his engagement, as he believes both you and
he will be happier apart. Only you must be brave, both for your own
sake, and for Mr. Decies', and for Richard Calmady's sake, also.--Lady
Constance," she went on, with a certain gentle authority, "d