but she did not move, the tears were streaming down her cheeks,
and she did not want him to see them.

How well he had taken it! How well, and yet he loved her! She realised
now how much he loved her, how fine he was, and generous, even Hugh
could not have been more generous than he.

And Marjorie stood there like one in a dream, watching, yet seeing
nothing, going over in her mind all that had passed, suffering the pain
of it. And she had loved him once! Those mystic moonlight meetings, his
young arms about her, his lips against hers--oh, she had loved him! And
then had come the commonplace, the everyday, sordid side of it, he the
accepted lover, high in Lady Linden's favour, which meant the gradual
awakening from a dream, her dream of love.

"I am fickle, I am false. I do not know my own mind, and--and I have
hurt him. I am not worthy of hurting him. He is better, finer than I
ever thought."

Still Lady Linden prodded and trowelled at the neat bed, still she
demanded occasional help from the patient Curtis; and now came a man,
breathless and coatless, rushing across the lawn. He had news for her,
something that must be told; gone was his accustomed terror of her
ladyship. He told her what he had to say, and she dropped the trowel and
ran--actually ran as Marjorie had never seen her run.

She could have laughed, but for the pain at her heart. He had taken it
so well; he had risen to a height she had not suspected him capable of,
and the fault was hers, hers.

What was that? What were they carrying? God help her! What was that
they were carrying across the lawn? Why did they walk so quietly, so
carefully? Why ask?

She knew! Instinct told her. She knew! She flung out her hands and
gripped at the window-frame and watched. She saw her aunt, her usually
ruddy face drawn, haggard, and white. She saw something that lay
motionless on a part of the old barn-door, which four men were carrying
with such care. She saw a man on a bicycle dashing off down the drive.

Why ask? She knew! And only just now, a few short minutes ago--no, no,
a lifetime ago--she had told him she did not love him.

"An accident, Marjorie." Lady Linden's voice was harsh, unlike her usual
round tones. "An accident--that brute of a horse--girl, don't, don't
faint."

"I am not going to. I want to help--him."

They had brought Tom Arundel into the house, had laid him on a bed in an
upper room. The village doctor had come, and, finding something he