he came with the haste of happiness in her feet,
with the light of happiness radiant in her face. Of their own accord
those dear arms clasped themselves round me, of their own accord the
sweet lips came to meet mine. "My darling!" she whispered, "we may own
we love each other now?" Her head nestled with a tender contentedness
on my bosom. "Oh," she said innocently, "I am so happy at last!"

Ten days later we were happier still. We were married.

IV

The course of this narrative, steadily flowing on, bears me away from
the morning-time of our married life, and carries me forward to the end.

In a fortnight more we three were back in London, and the shadow was
stealing over us of the struggle to come.

Marian and I were careful to keep Laura in ignorance of the cause that
had hurried us back--the necessity of making sure of the Count. It was
now the beginning of May, and his term of occupation at the house in
Forest Road expired in June. If he renewed it (and I had reasons,
shortly to be mentioned, for anticipating that he would), I might be
certain of his not escaping me. But if by any chance he disappointed
my expectations and left the country, then I had no time to lose in
arming myself to meet him as I best might.

In the first fulness of my new happiness, there had been moments when
my resolution faltered--moments when I was tempted to be safely
content, now that the dearest aspiration of my life was fulfilled in
the possession of Laura's love. For the first time I thought
faint-heartedly of the greatness of the risk, of the adverse chances
arrayed against me, of the fair promise of our new life, and of the
peril in which I might place the happiness which we had so hardly
earned. Yes! let me own it honestly. For a brief time I wandered, in
the sweet guiding of love, far from the purpose to which I had been
true under sterner discipline and in darker days. Innocently Laura had
tempted me aside from the hard path--innocently she was destined to
lead me back again.

At times, dreams of the terrible past still disconnectedly recalled to
her, in the mystery of sleep, the events of which her waking memory had
lost all trace. One night (barely two weeks after our marriage), when
I was watching her at rest, I saw the tears come slowly through her
closed eyelids, I heard the faint murmuring words escape her which told
me that her spirit was back again on the fatal journey from Blackwater
Park. That