e met his look with eyes that did not seem to see
him. "We were children then, Eustace," she said, "children playing on the
sands. But the great tide caught us. You breasted the waves, but I was
broken and thrown aside. I could never play on the sands again. I can
only lie and wait for the tide to come again and float me away."

He clenched his hands. "Do you think I would let you go--like that?" he
said.

"It is the only kindness you can do me," she answered in her low voice of
pleading.

He swung round to go. "I curse the day," he said very bitterly, "that you
ever met Basil Everard! I curse his memory!"

She flinched at the words as if they had been a blow. Her face turned
suddenly grey. She clasped her hands very tightly together, saying no
word.

He went to the door and paused, his back towards her. "I came in," he
said then, "to tell you that the de Vignes have offered to put us up at
their place for the wedding. And I have accepted."

He waited for some rejoinder but she made none. It was as if she had not
heard. Her eyes had the impotent, stricken look of one who has searched
dim distances for some beloved object--and searched in vain.

He did not glance round. His temper was on edge. With a fierce movement
he pulled open the door and departed. And behind him like a veil there
fell the silence of a great despair.

CHAPTER IV

THE NEW HOME

A small figure was already standing outside the station when the car Sir
Eustace drove whirled round the corner of the station yard. He was
greeted by the waving of a vigorous hand, as he dashed up, grinding on
the brakes in the last moment as was his impetuous custom. Everyone knew
him from afar by his driving, and the village children were wont to
scatter like rabbits at his approach.

Dinah however stood her ground with a confidence which his wild
performance hardly justified, and the moment he alighted sprang to meet
him with the eagerness of a child escaped from school.

"Oh, Eustace, it is fun coming here! I was so horribly afraid something
would stop me just at the last. But everything has turned out all right,
and we are going to have ever such a fine wedding with crowds and crowds
of people. Did you know Isabel wrote and said she would give me my
wedding dress? Isn't it dear of her? How is she now?"

"Where is your luggage?" said Eustace.

She pointed to a diminutive dress-basket behind her. "That's all there
is. I'm not to stay more than a w