en promised on the steps, but
either Mary had forgotten or she deemed it wiser to forget.

Sec. 11

I took my leave of Lady Ladislaw when the departure of Evesham broke the
party into dispersing fragments. I started down the drive towards the
rectory and then vaulted the railings by the paddock and struck across
beyond the mere. I could not go home with the immense burthen of thought
and new ideas and emotions that had come upon me. I felt confused and
shattered to incoherence by the new quality of Mary's atmosphere. I
turned my steps towards the wilder, lonelier part of the park beyond the
Killing Wood, and lay down in a wide space of grass between two
divergent thickets of bracken, and remained there for a very long time.

There it was in the park that for the first time I pitted myself against
life upon a definite issue, and prepared my first experience of defeat.
"I _will_ have her," I said, hammering at the turf with my fist. "I
will. I do not care if I give all my life...."

Then I lay still and bit the sweetness out of joints of grass, and
presently thought and planned.

CHAPTER THE FOURTH

THE MARRIAGE OF THE LADY MARY CHRISTIAN

Sec. 1

For three or four days I could get no word with Mary. I could not now
come and go as I had been able to do in the days when we were still "the
children." I could not work, I could not rest, I prowled as near as I
could to Burnmore House hoping for some glimpse of her, waiting for the
moment when I could decently present myself again at the house.

When at last I called, Justin had gone and things had some flavor of the
ancient time. Lady Ladislaw received me with an airy intimacy, all the
careful responsibility of her luncheon party manner thrown aside. "And
how goes Cambridge?" she sang, sailing through the great saloon towards
me, and I thought that for the occasion Cambridge instead of Oxford
would serve sufficiently well. "You'll find them all at tennis," said
Lady Ladislaw, and waved me on to the gardens. There I found all four of
them and had to wait until their set was finished.

"Mary," I said at the first chance, "are we never to talk again?"

"It's all different," she said.

"I am dying to talk to you--as we used to talk."

"And I--Stevenage. But---- You see?"

"Next time I come," I said, "I shall bring you a letter. There is so
much----"

"No," she said. "Can't you get up in the morning? Very early--five or
six. No one is up until ever so