ng in her ears
though Sir James's complacent speech, through the oddly constrained
luncheon, through the half-tender, half-masculine reasoning of her
companion. He HAD loved her--he had suffered and perhaps thought her
false. Suddenly she stopped. At the further end of the walk the ominous
stranger whom she wished to avoid was standing looking towards the
house.

How provoking! She glanced again; he was leaning against a tree and was
obviously as preoccupied as she was herself. He was actually sketching
the ivy-covered gable of the library. What presumption! And he was
sketching with his left hand. A sudden thrill of superstition came over
her. She moved eagerly forward for a better view of him. No! he had two
arms!

But his quick eye had already caught sight of her, and before she could
retreat she could see that he had thrown away his sketch-book and was
hastening eagerly toward her. Amazed and confounded she would have
flown, but her limbs suddenly refused their office, and as he at last
came near her with the cry of "Helen!" upon his lips, she felt herself
staggering, and was caught in his arms.

"Thank God," he said. "Then she HAS let you come to me!"

She disengaged herself slowly and dazedly from him and stood looking at
him with wondering eyes. He was bronzed and worn; there was the second
arm: but still it was HE. And with the love, which she now knew he had
felt, looking from his honest eyes!

"SHE has let me come!" she repeated vacantly. "Whom do you mean?"

"The duchess."

"The duchess?"

"Yes." He stopped suddenly, gazing at her blank face, while his own grew
ashy white. "Helen! For God's sake tell me! You have not accepted him?"

"I have accepted no one," she stammered, with a faint color rising to
her cheeks. "I do not understand you."

A look of relief came over him. "But," he said amazedly, "has not the
duchess told you how I happen to be here? How, when you disappeared from
Paris long ago--with my ambition crushed, and nothing left to me but
my old trade of the fighter--I joined a secret expedition to help the
Chilian revolutionists? How I, who might have starved as a painter,
gained distinction as a partisan general, and was rewarded with an
envoyship in Europe? How I came to Paris to seek you? How I found that
even the picture--your picture, Helen--had been sold. How, in tracing it
here, I met the duchess at Deep Hill, and learning you were with her, in
a moment of impulse told her my wh