ome
of their old expressiveness, and her voice an echo of its old full tone.

She asked Rosewarne a polite question or two concerning his holiday, and
they fell at once to ordinary talk--of repairs, rents, game, and
live-stock generally, the hiring of a couple of under-keepers, the
likeliest tenant for a park-lodge which had fallen empty; of investments
too, and the money market, since Rosewarne was her man of business as well
as steward.

Lady Killiow trusted him absolutely; but only because she had long since
proved him. He on his part yielded her the deepest respect, both for her
sagacity in business and for the fine self-command with which she, an
actress of obscure birth, had put the stage behind her, assumed her rank,
and borne it through all these years with something more than adequacy.
John Rosewarne, like a true Briton, venerated rank, and had a Briton's
instinct for the behaviour proper to rank. About his mistress there could
be no question. She was a great lady to the last drop of her blood.

His devotion to her had a touch of high chivalry. It came of long
service; of pity for her early widowhood, for her childlessness, for the
fate ordaining that all these great possessions must be inherited by
strangers; but most of all it was coloured by a memory of which he had
never dared, and would never dare, to speak.

He had seen her on the stage. Once, in his wild days, and not long before
he enlisted, he had spent a week in Plymouth, where she was acting, the
one star in a touring company. Night after night she had laid a spell on
him; it was not Rosalind, not Imogen, not Mrs. Haller, not Lady Teazle,
that he watched from the pit; but one divine woman passing from avatar to
avatar. So, when the last night revealed her as Lady Macbeth, as little
could he condemn her of guilt as understand her remorse. He saw her
suffering because for so splendid a creature nothing less could be decreed
by the jealous gods. It tortured him; and when the officer announced her
death, for the moment he could believe no less. 'The queen, my lord, is
dead.' 'She should have died hereafter.' How well he remembered the
words and Macbeth's reply--those two strokes upon the heart, strokes of a
muffled bell following the outcry of women.

He was no reader of poetry. He had bought the book afterwards, and flung
it away; it tangled him in words, but showed him nothing of the woman he
sought.

Yet to-day, as he stood before L