ky were not clear, then you would have to
come at four in the morning, should the clouds have dispersed.'

'Could not the telescope be brought to my house?'

Swithin shook his head.

'Perhaps you did not observe its real size,--that it was fixed to a frame-
work? I could not afford to buy an equatorial, and I have been obliged
to rig up an apparatus of my own devising, so as to make it in some
measure answer the purpose of an equatorial. It _could_ be moved, but I
would rather not touch it.'

'Well, I'll go to the telescope,' she went on, with an emphasis that was
not wholly playful. 'You are the most ungallant youth I ever met with;
but I suppose I must set that down to science. Yes, I'll go to the tower
at nine every night.'

'And alone? I should prefer to keep my pursuits there unknown.'

'And alone,' she answered, quite overborne by his inflexibility.

'You will not miss the morning observation, if it should be necessary?'

'I have given my word.'

'And I give mine. I suppose I ought not to have been so exacting!' He
spoke with that sudden emotional sense of his own insignificance which
made these alternations of mood possible. 'I will go anywhere--do
anything for you--this moment--to-morrow or at any time. But you must
return with me to the tower, and let me show you the observing process.'

They retraced their steps, the tender hoar-frost taking the imprint of
their feet, while two stars in the Twins looked down upon their two
persons through the trees, as if those two persons could bear some sort
of comparison with them. On the tower the instructions were given. When
all was over, and he was again conducting her to the Great House she
said--

'When can you start?'

'Now,' said Swithin.

'So much the better. You shall go up by the night mail.'

V

On the third morning after the young man's departure Lady Constantine
opened the post-bag anxiously. Though she had risen before four o'clock,
and crossed to the tower through the gray half-light when every blade and
twig were furred with rime, she felt no languor. Expectation could
banish at cock-crow the eye-heaviness which apathy had been unable to
disperse all the day long.

There was, as she had hoped, a letter from Swithin St. Cleeve.

'DEAR LADY CONSTANTINE,--I have quite succeeded in my mission, and
shall return to-morrow at 10 p.m. I hope you have not failed in the
observations. Watching the star through an ope