window, was a little like the face
of this warm, sweet night. It was sensitive, harmonious; and its harmony
was not, as in some faces, cold--but seemed to tremble and glow and
flutter, as though it were a spirit which had found its place of
resting.

In her garden,--all velvety grey, with black shadows beneath the
yew-trees, the white flowers alone seemed to be awake, and to look at
her wistfully. The trees stood dark and still. Not even the night birds
stirred. Alone, the little stream down in the bottom raised its voice,
privileged when day voices were hushed.

It was not in Audrey Noel to deny herself to any spirit that was abroad;
to repel was an art she did not practise. But this night, though the
Spirit of Peace hovered so near, she did not seem to know it. Her
hands trembled, her cheeks were burning; her breast heaved, and sighs
fluttered from her lips, just parted.

CHAPTER V

Eustace Cardoc, Viscount Miltoun, had lived a very lonely life, since
he first began to understand the peculiarities of existence. With the
exception of Clifton, his grandmother's 'majordomo,' he made, as a small
child, no intimate friend. His nurses, governesses, tutors, by their
own confession did not understand him, finding that he took himself
with unnecessary seriousness; a little afraid, too, of one whom they
discovered to be capable of pushing things to the point of enduring pain
in silence. Much of that early time was passed at Ravensham, for he had
always been Lady Casterley's favourite grandchild. She recognized in
him the purposeful austerity which had somehow been omitted from the
composition of her daughter. But only to Clifton, then a man of fifty
with a great gravity and long black whiskers, did Eustace relieve
his soul. "I tell you this, Clifton," he would say, sitting on the
sideboard, or the arm of the big chair in Clifton's room, or wandering
amongst the raspberries, "because you are my friend."

And Clifton, with his head a little on one side, and a sort of wise
concern at his 'friend's' confidences, which were sometimes of an
embarrassing description, would answer now and then: "Of course, my
lord," but more often: "Of course, my dear."

There was in this friendship something fine and suitable, neither of
these 'friends' taking or suffering liberties, and both being interested
in pigeons, which they would stand watching with a remarkable attention.

In course of time, following the tradition of his famil