lyn stood,
and told her that Walter had gone to order the horses. "I would rather
you were all away before Mrs. Middleton comes," she said: "Henry
Hardwicke has gone for her."

This departure was a signal to the rest. The groups melted away, and
with sad farewells to one another, and awestruck glances at the windows
of the farmhouse, almost all the guests departed. The sound of wheels
and horse-hoofs died away in the lanes, and all was very still. The bees
hummed busily round the white lilies and the lavender, and on the warm
turf of one of the narrow paths lay Archie Carroll.

He had a weight on heart and brain. There had been a moment all blue and
sunny, the last of his happy life, when Sissy's laughing face looked
back at him and he was a light-hearted-boy. Then had come a moment of
horror and incredulous despair, and that black moment had hardened into
eternity. Nightmare is hideous, and Archie's very life had become a
nightmare. Of course he would get over it, like his cousin, though,
unlike his cousin, he did not think so; and their different moods had
their different bitternesses. In days to come Carroll would enjoy his
life once more, would be ready for a joke or an adventure, would dance
the night through, would fall in love. This misery was a swift and
terrible entrance into manhood, for he could never be a boy again. And
the scar would be left, though the wound would assuredly heal. But
Archie, stumbling blindly through that awful pass, never thought that he
should come again to the light of day: it was to him as the blackness of
a hopeless hell.

CHAPTER L.

THROUGH THE NIGHT.

The village-clock struck five. As the last lingering stroke died upon
the air there was the sound of a carriage rapidly approaching. Carroll
raised his head when it stopped at the gate, and saw Hardwicke spring
out and help a lady to alight. She was an old lady, who walked quickly
to the house, looking neither to right nor left, and vanished within the
doorway. Hardwicke stopped, as if to give some order to the driver, and
then hurried after her. Archie stared vaguely, first at them, and then
at the man, who turned his horses and went round to the stables. When
they were out of sight he laid his head down again. The little scene had
been a vivid picture which stamped itself with curious distinctness on
his brain, yet failed to convey any meaning whatever. He had not the
faintest idea of the agony of love and fear in Mrs.