country, she after
me. And the last I saw of her was just after I leaped a hedge and she was
coming over it after me--a wonderful athletic young figure in midair
silhouetted against the sky line. . . . That was the last I saw of her. I
fancy she must have pulled up dead beat--or perhaps she came a cropper."

"She did," said the girl in a low voice.

"Is that so?" he said, interested. "Hope it didn't damage her."

"She broke her thigh."

"Oh, that's too bad!" he exclaimed. "If I'd guessed any such thing I'd
have come back. . . . The poor little thing! I mean that, though she was
nearly six feet, I seem to think of her as little--and, of course, I'm
six--two and a half. . . . Good little sport, that Diana girl! She got
over it all right, I hope."

"It lamed her for life, Lord Marque."

Shocked, for a moment he could find no words to characterise his
feelings. Then:

"Oh, dammitall! I say, it's a rotten shame, isn't it? And all on account
of me--that superb young thing taking hedges like a hunter! Oh, come now,
you know I--it hurts me all the way through. I wish I'd let her catch me!
What would she have done to me? I wouldn't mind being pulled about a
bit--or anything--if it would have prevented her injury. By gad, you
know, I'd even have eaten her plum cake, frosting and all, to have saved
her such a fate."

The girl's eyes searched his. "That was not the most tragic part of it,
Lord Marque."

"God bless us! Was there anything more?"

"Yes. . . . She was in love with you."

"With--with _me_?" he repeated, bewildered.

"Yes. As a young, romantic girl she fell in love with you. She was a
curious child--like all the Guernseys, a strange mixture of impulse and
constancy, of romance and determination. If she had fallen in love with
Satan she would have remained constant. But she only fell in love with
young Marque. . . . And she loves him to this day."

"That--that's utterly impossible!" he stammered. "Didn't she become a
suffragette and carry a banner and chase me and vow to make me eat my own
words frosted on a terrible plum cake?"

"Yes. And all the while she went on loving you."

"How do you know?" he demanded, incredulously.

"She confided in me."

"In _you_!"

"I knew her well, Lord Marque. . . . Not as well as I thought I did,
perhaps; yet, perhaps better than--many--perhaps better than anybody. . .
. We were brought up together."

"You were her governess?"

"I--attempted to act in a similar