r eyes met, I could not
understand--nay, I could scarce believe that it had been taken from me."

There, in her arms, among the flowers and in the sweetness of the sun, he
lived again the past, telling her of the days when, knowing his danger,
he had held himself aloof, declining to come to her lord's house with the
familiarity of a kinsman, because the pang of seeing her often was too
great to bear; and relating to her also the story of the hours when he
had watched her and she had not known his nearness or guessed his pain,
when she had passed in her equipage, not seeing him, or giving him but a
gracious smile. He had walked outside her window at midnight sometimes,
too, coming because he was a despairing man, and could not sleep, and
returning homeward, having found no rest, but only increase of anguish.
"Sometimes," he said, "I dared not look into your eyes, fearing my own
would betray me; but now I can gaze into your soul itself, for the
midnight is over--and joy cometh with the morning."

As he had spoken, he had caressed softly with his hand her cheek and her
crown of hair, and such was his great gentleness that 'twas as if he
touched lovingly a child; for into her face there had come that look
which it would seem that in the arms of the man she loves every true
woman wears--a look which is somehow like a child's in its trusting,
sweet surrender and appeal, whatsoever may be her stateliness and the
splendour of her beauty.

Yet as he touched her cheek so and her eyes so dwelt on him, suddenly her
head fell heavily upon his breast, hiding her face, even while her
unwreathing arms held more closely.

"Oh! those mad days before!" she cried--"Oh! those mad, mad days before!"

"Nay, they are long passed, sweet," he said, in his deep, noble voice,
thinking that she spoke of the wildness of her girlish years--"and all
our days of joy are yet to come."

"Yes, yes," she cried, clinging closer, yet with shuddering, "they were
_before_--the joy--the joy is all to come."

CHAPTER XV--In which Sir John Oxon finds again a trophy he had lost

His Grace of Osmonde went back to France to complete his business, and
all the world knew that when he returned to England 'twould be to make
his preparations for his marriage with my Lady Dunstanwolde. It was a
marriage not long to be postponed, and her ladyship herself was known
already to be engaged with lacemen, linen-drapers, toyshop women, and
goldsmiths. Mercers a