such times it is the woman who scans
the veil of the future. How long would that beacon burn which flamed now
in such prodigal waste? Would not the very springs of it dry up? She
looked at him, and she saw the Viking. But the Viking had fled from the
world, and they--they would be going into it. Could love prevail against
its dangers and pitfalls and--duties? Love was the word that rang out, as
one calling through the garden, and her thoughts ran molten. Let love
overflow--she gloried in the waste! And let the lean years come,--she
defied them to-day.

"Oh, Hugh!" she faltered.

"My dearest!" he cried, and would have seized her in his arms again but
for a look of supplication. That he had in him this innate and
unsuspected chivalry filled her with an exquisite sweetness.

"You will--protect me?" she asked.

"With my life and with my honour," he answered. "Honora, there will be no
happiness like ours."

"I wish I knew," she sighed: and then, her look returning from the veil,
rested on him with a tenderness that was inexpressible. "I--I don't care,
Hugh. I trust you."

The sun was setting. Slowly they went back together through the paths of
the tangled garden, which had doubtless seen many dramas, and the courses
changed of many lives: overgrown and outworn now, yet love was loth to
leave it. Honora paused on the lawn before the house, and looked back at
him over her shoulder.

"How happy we could have been here, in those days," she sighed.

"We will be happier there," he said.

Honora loved. Many times in her life had she believed herself to have had
this sensation, and yet had known nothing of these aches and ecstasies!
Her mortal body, unattended, went out to dinner that evening. Never, it
is said, was her success more pronounced. The charm of Randolph
Leffingwell, which had fascinated the nobility of three kingdoms, had
descended on her, and hostesses had discovered that she possessed the
magic touch necessary to make a dinner complete. Her quality, as we know,
was not wit: it was something as old as the world, as new as modern
psychology. It was, in short, the power to stimulate. She infused a sense
of well-being; and ordinary people, in her presence, surprised themselves
by saying clever things.

Lord Ayllington, a lean, hard-riding gentleman, who was supposed to be on
the verge of contracting an alliance with the eldest of the Grenfell
girls, regretted that Mrs. Spence was neither unmarried nor an heire