t him give me a farthing!"

"Why no, that's the kind of thing one couldn't do!" said Doris with
decision. "But there are plenty of other ways of being nice. Well--here
we all are, as happy as larks; and what we've really done, I suppose, is
to take a woman's character away, and give her another push to
perdition."

"She hadn't any character!" cried Alice Wigram indignantly. "And she
would have gone to perdition without us, and taken that poor youth with
her. Oh, I know, I know! But morals are a great puzzle to me. However, I
firmly remind myself of that 'one in the eye,' and then all my doubts
depart. Good-night. Sleep well! You know very well that I should have
shirked it if it hadn't been for you!"

* * * * *

A little later the Meadowses stood together at the open window of their
room, which led by a short flight of steps to a flowering garden below.
All Franick had gone to bed, and this wing in which the "state-rooms"
were, seemed to be remote from the rest of the house. They were alone;
the night was balmy; and there was a flood of secret joy in Doris's
veins which gave her a charm, a beguilement Arthur had never seen in her
before. She was more woman, and therefore more divine! He could hardly
recall her as the careful housewife, harassed by lack of pence, knitting
her brows over her butcher's books, mending endless socks, and trying to
keep the nose of a lazy husband to the grindstone. All that seemed to
have vanished. This white sylph was pure romance--pure joy. He saw her
anew; he loved her anew.

"Why did you look so pretty to-night? You little witch!" he murmured in
her ear, as he held her close to him.

"Arthur!"--she drew herself away from him. "_Did_ I look pretty? Honour
bright!"

"Delicious! How often am I to say it?"

"You'd better not. Don't wake the devil in me, Arthur! It's all this
tea-gown. If you go on like this, I shall have to buy one like it."

"Buy a dozen!" he said joyously. "Look there, Doris--you see that path?
Let's go on to the moor a little."

Out they crept, like truant children, through the wood-path and out upon
the moor. Meadows had brought a shawl, and spread it on a rock, full
under the moonlight. There they sat, close together, feeling all the
goodness and glory of the night, drinking in the scents of heather and
fern, the sounds of plashing water and gently moving winds. Above them,
the vault of heaven and the friendly stars; below them,