e huge house whose
roof covered her before Lyntonhurst Old Church spoke up through the
dawn-hush and told the parish it was half-past four o'clock.

By five, he had found a pool cupped in the beech woods with mallows and
marsh marigolds and a screen of green things all round it and a tent of
blue sky over the sun-touched tree tops; and had stripped and splashed
into it and set all the birds to flight with the harsher song of human
things; by seven he was back at the Three Desires; by eight he had
shaved and changed and breakfasted and was out again in the fields and
the leafy lanes, and by nine he was at the lich-gate of the church.

CHAPTER XXXI

She was there already; sitting far back at the end of one of the narrow
wooden side benches with the shadow of the gate's moss-grown roof and of
the big cypress above it partly screening her, her shrinking position
evincing a desire to escape general observation as clearly as her pale
face and nervously drumming hand betrayed a state of extreme agitation.

She rose as Cleek lifted the latch and came in, and advanced to meet him
with both hands outstretched in greeting and a rich colour staining all
her face.

"I knew that you would come--I was as certain of it as I am now this
minute," she said with a little embarrassed laugh, then dropped her eyes
and said no more, for he had taken those two hands in his and was
holding them tightly and looking at her with an expression that was half
a reproach and half a caress.

"I am glad you did not doubt," he said, with an odd, wistful little
smile. "It is good to know one's friends have faith in one, Miss Lorne.
I had almost come to believe that you had forgotten me."

"Because I did not write? Oh, but I could not--indeed I could not. I
have been spending days and nights in a house of mourning--Lady Chepstow
gave me leave of absence; and my heart was so full I did not write even
to her. I have been trying to soothe and to comfort a distracted girl, a
half-crazed old man, a bereft and horribly smitten family. I have been
doing all in my power to put hope and courage into the heart of a
despairing and most unhappy lover."

"Meaning Captain Morford?"

"Yes. He has been almost beside himself. And since this last blow
fell.... Oh, I had been so sure that it would not, that between us all
we would manage to avert it; yet in spite of everything it did fall--it
did!--and if I live to be a hundred I shall never forget it."

"