--the first floor, overlooked the river and had evidently been taken
furnished, for there were visible marks of a recent struggle with an
Edwardian taste which, flushed from triumph over Victorianism, had
filled the rooms with early Georgian remains. On the only definite
victory, a rose-coloured window seat of great comfort and little age,
Courtier sat down, and resigned himself to doing nothing with the ease
of an old soldier.

To the protective feeling he had once had for a very graceful,
dark-haired child, he joined not only the championing pity of a man of
warm heart watching a woman in distress, but the impatience of one, who,
though temperamentally incapable of feeling oppressed himself, rebelled
at sight of all forms of tyranny affecting others.

The sight of the grey towers, still just visible, under which
Miltoun and his father sat, annoyed him deeply; symbolizing to him,
Authority--foe to his deathless mistress, the sweet, invincible lost
cause of Liberty. But presently the river; bringing up in flood the
unbound water that had bathed every shore, touched all sands, and seen
the rising and falling of each mortal star, so soothed him with its
soundless hymn to Freedom, that Audrey Noel coming in with her hands
full of flowers, found him sleeping firmly, with his mouth shut.

Noiselessly putting down the flowers, she waited for his awakening.
That sanguine visage, with its prominent chin, flaring moustaches,
and eyebrows raised rather V-shaped above his closed eyes, wore an
expression of cheery defiance even in sleep; and perhaps no face in all
London was so utterly its obverse, as that of this dark, soft-haired
woman, delicate, passive, and tremulous with pleasure at sight of the
only person in the world from whom she felt she might learn of Miltoun,
without losing her self-respect.

He woke at last, and manifesting no discomfiture, said:

"It was like you not to wake me."

They sat for a long while talking, the riverside traffic drowsily
accompanying their voices, the flowers drowsily filling the room with
scent; and when Courtier left, his heart was sore. She had not spoken of
herself at all, but had talked nearly all the time of Barbara, praising
her beauty and high spirit; growing pale once or twice, and evidently
drinking in with secret avidity every allusion to Miltoun. Clearly, her
feelings had not changed, though she would not show them! Courtier's
pity for her became well-nigh violent.

It was