usic through the soft greensward.
Here you may lose yourself among the arches and pillars, the broken
altars, the overturned fonts, and the old tombs and marble tablets
speaking of dead worthies long forgotten. And if you lose yourself with
the right person, your loss may be (as these same epitaphs read) her
eternal gain.

Geoffrey wandered in here with Mrs. Carey. He had been trying to find
Miss Windsor; but he met the other first. He could not treat her rudely,
perhaps he did not wish to; but to his speech she answered but in
monosyllables or not at all. Finally they sat down on the grass, leaning
on an old stone pillar overthrown in a corner, half sheltered by what
had been an altar in the old days, before the church was disestablished.
Geoffrey did not speak for some time, and when he looked at her he saw
that she was crying. Great tears were in her eyes, and as he bent down
they seemed tenfold even their usual depth.

"Mrs. Carey! Eleanor!" he cried in despair, "what can be so wrong with
you! Pray tell me--please tell me--" She made no answer; her hand was
cold and unresisting as he raised it with the soft white arm from the
grass; the sleeve fell back, and the setting sunlight showed each little
vein in her transparent skin. "Pray, tell me!" Geoffrey went on, and
then, more softly, "You know I have never forgotten you!"

Her breast was rising and falling with her weeping; but only a single
sigh escaped her lips. At his words a deep sob seemed to break from a
full heart; half rising, on an elbow, she placed her hand on Geoffrey's
shoulder and drew his head in the bend of her wrist down close to her as
she lay. Her lips almost brushed his cheek as she poured into his ear a
torrent of words. "I am so miserable! so miserable!" was all he could
distinguish. Then she arose, sitting upright.

"Geoffrey Ripon, my life is a lie--a mean, unbroken lie. You know why I
married Carey--he could give me position, _eclat_, fashion--fashion,
which is all we moderns prize, who have killed our nobles and banished
honor from the dictionary. I sold myself to him and I have queened it,
there in London, among the lucky gamblers and the demagogues and the
foreign millionaires. All that this world--all that the world can give I
have had, Geoffrey Ripon. And I tell you that there is nothing but love,
love, love. It is these things that are the lie, Geoffrey--not love and
truth and honesty. Oh, forgive me, Geoffrey, but I do so crave for