eyond all possibility
of doubt, that it had nearly broken her heart to leave him; and though
her tragically childish notion of setting him free by eloping with
Leonard Dowson often brought a tender, half-quizzical smile to his lips,
Owen fully appreciated the love and eager longing which had driven Toni
to that futile step.

If Toni had found her soul, Owen too had gained something which his
character had hitherto lacked; and in his new humility and comprehension
there was the germ, also, of a new content for both of them.

* * * * *

Toni caught her breath in a sob of rapture as the old house came into
view.

Everyone about the place, servants, gardeners, chauffeur, had worked
their hardest during the last excited weeks to bring the whole place to
the highest pitch of perfection; and to Toni's longing eyes the
beautiful old house, in its setting of tall trees, smooth green lawns,
and brilliant, many-hued flowers, had never looked so eminently
attractive, so alluringly home-like before.

There were tears in her eyes as she sprang out of the car and greeted
the waiting Andrews, who stood beside the open door. In the background
Kate and Maggie hovered, all smiles and blushes; and it was evident that
whatever construction a censorious world might have put upon Toni's rash
departure, these faithful souls, at least, believed no evil.

As a matter of fact very little of the truth ever did leak out. When it
was known, as Herrick took good care it should be known, that Mr. Rose
had gone to Italy to join his wife, who was wintering there, and would
return with her after a few weeks spent together by the shores of the
Mediterranean, gossip was at once checked and dumbfounded.

If there had been anything wrong, said the neighbourhood, if Mrs. Rose
had left her husband secretly as had been asserted, surely the fact of
Mr. Rose's going to Italy to join her would not have been given quite so
much publicity.

Not only were there paragraphs in all the society papers--here Barry's
hand was discernible--but there were even portraits of the rising young
author and his wife, taken together in the garden of their whitewashed
villa outside Naples; and it was decided, finally, that Mrs. Rose's
hasty departure had been, after all, a good deal less mysterious than it
had at first appeared.

There was some consolation, to the more determined gossips of the
neighbourhood, in spreading a rumour that the yo