s hanging around them,
side by side with her father's tenant. She knew that life had somehow
become a fairer thing to her, and that for many years she had been
living in darkness. And it was her companion, this mysterious stranger
with his wan young face and sad thoughtful eyes, who had brought the
light. She could see it flashing across the whole landscape of her
future, revealing the promise of a larger life than any she had ever
dreamed of, full of brilliant possibilities and more perfect happiness
than any she had ever imagined. She told herself that he was the
Columbus who had shown her the new land of culture, with all its fair
places, intellectual and artistic. This was the whole meaning of the
change in her. There could be nothing else.

CHAPTER XIV

HELEN THURWELL ASKS A DIRECT QUESTION

At the summit of the little spur of cliff they paused. Close on one side
were the windows of Falcon's Nest, and on the other the batch of black
firs which formed the background to it ran down the steep cliff side to
the sea. The path which they were following curved round the cottage,
and crossed the moor within a few yards of the spot where Sir Geoffrey
had been found. As they stood together for a moment before parting, she
noticed, with a sudden cold dismay, that thick shutters had recently
been fitted to the windows of the little room into which she had stolen
on the day of Sir Geoffrey's murder.

"Are you afraid of being robbed?" she asked. "One would imagine that
your room there held a secret."

She was watching him, and she told herself the shot had gone to its
mark.

He followed her finger with his eyes, and kept his face turned away from
her.

"Yes, that is so," he answered quietly. "That little room holds its
secret and its ghost for me. Would to God," he cried, with a sudden
passion trembling in his tones, "that I had never seen it--that I had
never come here!"

Her heart beat fast. Could it be that he was going to confess to her?
Then he turned suddenly round, and in the twilight his white face and
dark luminous eyes seemed to her like mute emblems of an anguish which
moved her woman's heart to pity. There was none of the cowardice of
guilt there, nothing of the criminal in the deep melancholy which seemed
to have set its mark upon his whole being. And yet he must be very
guilty--very much a criminal.

Her eyes strayed from his face back to the window again. There was no
light anywhere in the hou