he tumult, the
excitement of the joy that had come to her.

At six o'clock next morning, before any member of the house party was
awake, Gore had made his way to the stables; and a few minutes later
had emerged, leading two saddled horses. In the drive he had been
joined by Clodagh, dressed in her riding habit, and fresh and buoyant
as on the first morning when she had ridden alone through the great
gates, and had dreamed of his coming to Tuffnell.

No companionship can be more delightful than that of two people wholly
occupied with each other, who ride together on a summer morning. To
Clodagh, the frank happiness of that stolen ride--the intoxicating
sense of reality conveyed by Gore's glance, as she met it in the
searching sunlight, had been things that possessed no parallel. Her
natural, spontaneous capacity for joy had wakened within her like a
flood of light. The misgivings--the dark hours--the feverish
artificiality of the past months had been dispersed as if by magic. She
had become as a child who, by the fervour of its own delight, sheds
delight upon all around.

And so it had been with the days that had elapsed before their
departure from Buckinghamshire. They had met as often as chance would
permit; but, with the exception of the first stolen ride, they had
arranged no more secret meetings. And to Clodagh the half-furtive,
ever-expectant existence had been fraught with new pleasure. To talk
and laugh with others, to watch Gore do likewise, and all the while to
know that, unseen by any eyes, unsuspected by those around them, their
lives were linked together--their thoughts belonged to each other--was
a source of intense excitement, of unending joy.

To Nance alone did she confide her secret; and here lay another source
of happiness. For every night, when the house party had retired, when
Simonetta had been dismissed, and the house given over to the great
sheltering stillness of the country, the sisters had exchanged such
confidences as all women love--talking of their hopes, their fears,
their pasts, their futures, in the half-reluctant, half-eager
confessions that the dark suggests.

Then at last these days of mystery and possibility had come to an end.
Gore had received a letter from his mother asking him to join her in
Scotland; and almost at the same hour had come a cablegram from Pierce
Estcoit saying that he, with his mother and sister, had sailed for
England a fortnight earlier than they had at f