tween the houses was a little wood, through which the road passed, and
which was like a vestibule to the smiling place where her throne and
empire was. To other eyes it was no more smiling than the other side,
but as soon as Theo became conscious, in the distance, of the bare
height, all denuded of trees, on which Markland stood, the landscape
seemed to change for him. There was sunshine in it which was nowhere
else, more quiet skies and warmer light. He threw down the burden of his
thoughts among the autumn leaves that strewed the brook in that bit of
woodland, and, on the other side, remembered with an elation that went
to his head, that he had this sacrifice, though she might never know it,
to lay at her feet; the flower of his life, the garland of honour, the
violet crown, all to scatter on her path. He would rather she should put
her foot on them than that they should decorate his brow,--even if she
never knew.

With these thoughts, he sped along the country road, which no longer was
so green, so warm with sunshine, as before. Markland looked already cold
in its bareness against the distant sky, all flushed with flying clouds,
the young saplings about, bending before the wind, as if they supplicated
for shelter and a little warmth, and the old tottering cedar behind the
house, looking as if the next blast would bring it down with a crash.
There had been a great deal of planting going on, but this only added
to the straggling lines of weak-kneed, uncomfortable younglings, who
fluttered their handful of leaves, and shivered in every wind that blew.
Lady Markland no longer sat on the terrace. She received her familiar
visitor where only intimate friends were allowed to come, in the
morning-room, to which its new distinction gave something of the
barrenness and rigidity of a room of business. The big writing-table
filled up the centre, and nothing remained of its old aspect except
Geoff's little settlement within the round of the window; a low table
for his few lesson books, where less lawful publications, in the shape
of stories, were but too apt to appear, and a low, but virtuously hard
chair, on which he was supposed to sit, and--work; but there was not
much work done, as everybody knew.

Lady Markland did not rise to receive her visitor. She had a book in her
right hand, which she did not even disturb herself to put down. It was
her left hand which she held out to Warrender, with a smile: and this
mark of a friend