et which actually
supported her reclining figure for the moment, to be quite Olympian;
save indeed that in place of haughty effrontery there sat on her
countenance only the healthful sprightliness of an English girl.

Dare had withdrawn to a point at which another path crossed the path
occupied by De Stancy. Looking in a side direction, he saw Havill
idling slowly up to him over the silent grass. Havill's knowledge of the
appointment had brought him out to see what would come of it. When he
neared Dare, but was still partially hidden by the boughs from the third
of the party, the former simply pointed to De Stancy upon which Havill
stood and peeped at him. 'Is she within there?' he inquired.

Dare nodded, and whispered, 'You need not have asked, if you had
examined his face.'

'That's true.'

'A fermentation is beginning in him,' said Dare, half pitifully; 'a
purely chemical process; and when it is complete he will probably be
clear, and fiery, and sparkling, and quite another man than the good,
weak, easy fellow that he was.'

To precisely describe Captain De Stancy's admiration was impossible. A
sun seemed to rise in his face. By watching him they could almost see
the aspect of her within the wall, so accurately were her changing
phases reflected in him. He seemed to forget that he was not alone.

'And is this,' he murmured, in the manner of one only half apprehending
himself, 'and is this the end of my vow?'

Paula was saying at this moment, 'Ariel sleeps in this posture, does
he not, Auntie?' Suiting the action to the word she flung out her arms
behind her head as she lay in the green silk hammock, idly closed her
pink eyelids, and swung herself to and fro.

BOOK THE THIRD. DE STANCY.

I.

Captain De Stancy was a changed man. A hitherto well-repressed energy
was giving him motion towards long-shunned consequences. His features
were, indeed, the same as before; though, had a physiognomist chosen to
study them with the closeness of an astronomer scanning the universe, he
would doubtless have discerned abundant novelty.

In recent years De Stancy had been an easy, melancholy, unaspiring
officer, enervated and depressed by a parental affection quite beyond
his control for the graceless lad Dare--the obtrusive memento of a
shadowy period in De Stancy's youth, who threatened to be the curse of
his old age. Throughout a long space he had persevered in his system of
rigidly incarcerating within himse