ecil had gone through of late, I think for
concentrated bitterness this moment was the worst. Though the colour was
identical, by feel and texture she knew the tress was not her own, added
to which, no such token had ever passed between herself and Bertie.

Well, there was no temptation to linger over the dead past now, which had
received its _coup de grace_ that wintry afternoon; almost every one felt
that some subtle change had passed over Cecil. Perhaps the one who least
felt its uncannyness was, Fane, who hovered near her with a brighter air.
No doubt some of the party were surprised when, just before it broke up,
the engagement of Cecil and Fane was announced; but no one guessed the
truth except Jack Vavasour, who, anxious and remorseful, only cursed
himself for a blundering idiot.

They were married on her twenty-fourth birthday, much to the relief of
her bridesmaid-sisters, who had begun to fear Cecil would be an old maid.
Fane sold out, and took his wife abroad, while the old Elizabethan
manor-house, which, since his succession to, he had never lived in, was
painted and luxuriously refurnished for the reception of the bride.

'Twas a pity Cecil married a rich man. Her best chance would have been
having to think, work, deny herself for another, who might thus have
become dear from the very sacrifices entailed by him. It was hard on
Fane, who had been constant so long, and found he had grasped nothing but
fairy gold. The old manor house was generally full, for somehow both
dreaded a _tete-a-tete_, and equally, in early days especially, a
betrayal of the feeling.

Cecil left her guests pretty much to their own devices in the morning,
and read and painted in her own peculiar den, fitted up half as a
library, half as a studio. The winter she devoted to hunting, and
scarcely any meet was too distant or country too intricate for her.
Bertie's riding lessons, at any rate, had not been forgotten, and
carelessness of life is certainly conducive to steadiness of nerve. Jack
Vavasour, who was out one day, was under the impression she wished to
break her neck. Mrs. Fane became noted in her county for going with the
most unflinching straightness, but so little did she care for the
reputation, that sometimes she would stick unambitiously to the roads and
never take a fence.

She had a separate stud of hunters, and rode independently of her
husband, who followed the amusement in a less erratic style than his
wife, and in m