the oak parlour, the
library and the huge drawing-room, in which the white heads of marble
statues protruded from the bags of brown holland wherewith they were
wrapped about in a manner ghastly to behold. At length they reached a
small octagon-shaped room that, facing south, commanded a most glorious
view of sea and land. It was called the Lady's Boudoir, and joined
another of about the same size, which in its former owner's time had
been used as a smoking-room.

"If you don't mind, madam," said the lord of all this magnificence, "I
should like to stop here, I am getting tired of walking." And there he
stopped for many years. The rest of the Castle was shut up; he scarcely
ever visited it except occasionally to see that the rooms were properly
aired, for he was a methodical man.

As for Beatrice, she went home, still chuckling, to receive a severe
reproof from Elizabeth for her "forwardness." But Owen Davies never
forgot the debt of gratitude he owed her. In his heart he felt convinced
that had it not been for her, he would have fled before Mrs. Thomas and
her horn-rimmed eyeglasses, to return no more. The truth of the matter
was, however, that young as was Beatrice, he fell in love with her then
and there, only to fall deeper and deeper into that drear abyss as years
went on. He never said anything about it, he scarcely even gave a hint
of his hopeless condition, though of course Beatrice divined something
of it as soon as she came to years of discretion. But there grew up in
Owen's silent, lonely breast a great and overmastering desire to make
this grey-eyed girl his wife. He measured time by the intervals that
elapsed between his visions of her. No period in his life was so
wretched and utterly purposeless as those two years which passed while
she was at her Training College. He was a very passive lover, as yet his
gathering passion did not urge him to extremes, and he could never make
up his mind to declare it. The box was in his hand, but he feared to
throw the dice.

But he drew as near to her as he dared. Once he gave Beatrice a flower,
it was when she was seventeen, and awkwardly expressed a hope that she
would wear it for his sake. The words were not much and the flower was
not much, but there was a look about the man's eyes, and a suppressed
passion and energy in his voice, which told their tale to the
keen-witted girl. After this he found that she avoided him, and bitterly
regretted his boldness. For Beatr