d into her
eyes. She had grown very pale--enchantingly pale. There was in her the
dim sense of a great fulfilment; the fulfilment of Nature's promise to
her; implicit in her woman's lot from the beginning.

"Diana!--" the low voice searched her heart--"You know--what I have come
to say? I meant to have waited a little longer--I was afraid!--but I
couldn't wait--it was beyond my strength. Diana!--come to me,
darling!--be my wife!"

He kissed the hand he held. His eyes beseeched; and into hers, widely
fixed upon him, had sprung tears--the tears of life's supremest joy. Her
lip trembled.

"I'm not worthy!" she said, in a whisper--"I'm not worthy!"

"Foolish Diana!--Darling, foolish Diana!--Give me my answer!"

And now he held both hands, and his confident smile dazzled her.

"I--" Her voice broke. She tried again, still in a whisper. "I will be
everything to you--that a woman can."

At that he put his arm round her, and she let him take that first kiss,
in which she gave him her youth, her life--all that she had and was.
Then she withdrew herself, and he saw her brow contract, and her mouth.

"I know!"--he said, tenderly--"I know! Dear, I think he would have been
glad. He and I made friends from the first."

She plucked at the heather beside her, trying for composure. "He would
have been so glad of a son--so glad--"

And then, by contrast with her own happiness, the piteous memory of her
father overcame her; and she cried a little, hiding her eyes against
Marsham's shoulder.

"There!" she said, at last, withdrawing herself, and brushing the tears
away. "That's all--that's done with--except in one's heart. Did--did
Lady Lucy know?"

She looked at him timidly. Her aspect had never been more lovely. Tears
did not disfigure her, and as compared with his first remembrance of
her, there was now a touching significance, an incomparable softness in
all she said and did, which gave him a bewildering sense of treasures to
come, of joys for the gathering.

Suddenly--involuntarily--there flashed through his mind the recollection
of his first love-passage with Alicia--how she had stung him on, teased,
and excited him. He crushed it at once, angrily.

As to Lady Lucy, he smilingly declared that she had no doubt guessed
something was in the wind.

"I have been 'gey ill to live with' since we got up to town. And when
the stupid meeting I had promised to speak at was put off, my mother
thought I had gone off my head--fro