springing and
the young larches were budding; but he could not go thither--the
picture-gallery was a haunted spot to him--and London he could endure.
The fashionable intelligence told him that the Duke and Duchess of
Hazlewood had arrived for the season, that they had had their
magnificent mansion refurnished, and that the beautiful duchess intended
to startle all London by the splendor and variety of her entertainments.

He said to himself that it would be impossible for him to remain in town
without seeing them--and see them of his own free will he never would
again.

Fate was, however, too strong for him. He had decided that he would
leave London rather than run the risk of meeting the Duchess of
Hazlewood. He went one morning to a favorite exhibition of pictures, and
the first person he saw in the gallery was the duchess herself. As their
eyes met her face grew deadly pale, so pale that he thought she would
faint and fall to the ground; her lips opened as though she would fain
utter his name. To him she looked taller, more beautiful, more stately
than ever--her superb costume suited her to perfection--yet he looked
coldly into the depths of her dark eyes, and without a word or sign of
greeting passed on.

He never knew whether she was hurt or not, but he decided that he would
leave London at once. He was a sensitive man more tender of heart than
men as a rule, and their meeting had been a source of torture to him. He
could not endure even the thought that Philippa should have lost all
claim to his respect. He decided to go to Tintagel, in wild, romantic
Cornwall; at least there would be boating, fishing, and the glorious
scenery.

"I must go somewhere," he said to himself--"I must do something. My life
hangs heavy on my hands--how will it end?"

So in sheer weariness and desperation he went to Tintagel, having, as he
thought, kept his determination to himself, as he wished no one to know
whither he had retreated. One of the newspapers, however, heard of it,
and in a little paragraph told that Lord Arleigh of Beechgrove had gone
to Tintagel for the summer. That paragraph had one unexpected result.

It was the first of May. The young nobleman was thinking of the May days
when he was a boy--of how the common near his early home was yellow with
gorse, and the hedges were white with hawthorn. He strolled sadly along
the sea-shore, thinking of the sunniest May he had known since then, the
May before his marriage.