hy else
Should I pronounce you free from all that heap
Of sins which had been irredeemable?
I felt they were not yours--what other way
Than this, not yours? The secret's wholly mine!

MILDRED. If you would see me die before his face...

GUENDOLEN. I'd hold my peace! And if the Earl returns
To-night?

MILDRED. Ah Heaven, he's lost!

GUENDOLEN. I thought so. Austin!
Enter AUSTIN
Oh, where have you been hiding?

AUSTIN. Thorold's gone,
I know not how, across the meadow-land.
I watched him till I lost him in the skirts
O' the beech-wood.

GUENDOLEN. Gone? All thwarts us.

MILDRED. Thorold too?

GUENDOLEN. I have thought. First lead this Mildred to her room.
Go on the other side; and then we'll seek
Your brother: and I'll tell you, by the way,
The greatest comfort in the world. You said
There was a clue to all. Remember, Sweet,
He said there was a clue! I hold it. Come!

ACT III

SCENE I.--The end of the Yew-tree Avenue under MILDRED'S Window.
A light seen through a central red pane

Enter TRESHAM through the trees

Again here! But I cannot lose myself.
The heath--the orchard--I have traversed glades
And dells and bosky paths which used to lead
Into green wild-wood depths, bewildering
My boy's adventurous step. And now they tend
Hither or soon or late; the blackest shade
Breaks up, the thronged trunks of the trees ope wide,
And the dim turret I have fled from, fronts
Again my step; the very river put
Its arm about me and conducted me
To this detested spot. Why then, I'll shun
Their will no longer: do your will with me!
Oh, bitter! To have reared a towering scheme
Of happiness, and to behold it razed,
Were nothing: all men hope, and see their hopes
Frustrate, and grieve awhile, and hope anew.
But I... to hope that from a line like ours
No horrid prodigy like this would spring,
Were just as though I hoped that from these old
Confederates against the sovereign day,
Children of older and yet older sires,
Whose living coral berries dropped, as now
On me, on many a baron's surcoat once,
On many a beauty's whimple--would p