ell, what then?' she said softly.

'I do not know.'

'But Lady Carlisle was his wife,' she whispered, with a swift sidelong
shot from eyes instantly averted. 'And--you remember what you said to
me--at Oxford? That if I were a lady, you would make me your wife. I am
not a lady, Sir George.'

'I did not say that,' Sir George answered quickly.

'No! What then?'

'You know very well,' he retorted with malice.

All of her cheek and neck that he could see turned scarlet. 'Well, at
any rate,' she said, 'let us be sure now that you are talking not to
Clarissa but to Pamela?'

'I am talking to neither,' he answered manfully. And he stood erect, his
hat in his hand; they were almost of a height. 'I am talking to the most
beautiful woman in the world,' he said, 'whom I also believe to be the
most virtuous--and whom I hope to make my wife. Shall it be so, Julia?'

She was trembling excessively; she used her fan that he might not see
how her hand shook. 'I--I will tell you to-morrow,' she murmured
breathlessly. 'At Manton Corner.'

'Now! Now!' he said.

But she cried 'No, to-morrow,' and fled from him into the house, deaf,
as she passed through the hall, to the clatter of dishes and the cries
of the waiters and the rattle of orders; for she had the singing of
larks in her ears, and her heart rose on the throb of the song, rose
until she felt that she must either cry or die--of very happiness.

CHAPTER XVI

THE BLACK FAN

I believe that Sir George, riding soberly to Estcombe in the morning,
was not guiltless of looking back in spirit. Probably there are few men
who, when the binding word has been said and the final step taken, do
not feel a revulsion of mind, and for a moment question the wisdom of
their choice. A more beautiful wife he could not wish; she was fair of
face and faultless in shape, as beautiful as a Churchill or a Gunning.
And in all honesty, and in spite of the undoubted advances she had made
to him, he believed her to be good and virtuous. But her birth, her
quality, or rather her lack of quality, her connections, these were
things to cry him pause, to bid him reflect; until the thought--mean and
unworthy, but not unnatural--that he was ruined, and what did it matter
whom he wedded? came to him, and he touched his horse with the spur and
cantered on by upland, down and clump, by Avebury, and Yatesbury, and
Compton Bassett, until he came to his home.

Returning in the afternoon, sad at starting,