perhaps, soon reduce it to an interlude! Yes,' he resumed
impulsively, 'I will go away. Love dies, and it is just as well to
strangle it in its birth; it can only die once! I'll go.'

'No, no!' she said, looking up apprehensively. 'I misled you. It is no
interlude to me,--it is tragical. I only meant that from a worldly point
of view it is an interlude, which we should try to forget. But the world
is not all. You will not go away?'

But he continued drearily, 'Yes, yes, I see it all; you have enlightened
me. It will be hurting your prospects even more than mine, if I stay.
Now Sir Blount is dead, you are free again,--may marry where you will,
but for this fancy of ours. I'll leave Welland before harm comes of my
staying.'

'Don't decide to do a thing so rash!' she begged, seizing his hand, and
looking miserable at the effect of her words. 'I shall have nobody left
in the world to care for! And now I have given you the great telescope,
and lent you the column, it would be ungrateful to go away! I was wrong;
believe me that I did not mean that it was a mere interlude to _me_. O
if you only knew how very, very far it is from that! It is my doubt of
the result to you that makes me speak so slightingly.'

They were now approaching cross-roads, and casually looking up they
beheld, thirty or forty yards beyond the crossing, Mr. Torkingham, who
was leaning over a gate, his back being towards them. As yet he had not
recognized their approach.

The master-passion had already supplanted St. Cleeve's natural
ingenuousness by subtlety.

'Would it be well for us to meet Mr. Torkingham just now?' he began.

'Certainly not,' she said hastily, and pulling the rein she instantly
drove down the right-hand road. 'I cannot meet anybody!' she murmured.
'Would it not be better that you leave me now?--not for my pleasure, but
that there may arise no distressing tales about us before we know--how to
act in this--this'--(she smiled faintly at him) 'heartaching extremity!'

They were passing under a huge oak-tree, whose limbs, irregular with
shoulders, knuckles, and elbows, stretched horizontally over the lane in
a manner recalling Absalom's death. A slight rustling was perceptible
amid the leafage as they drew out from beneath it, and turning up his
eyes Swithin saw that very buttoned page whose advent they had dreaded,
looking down with interest at them from a perch not much higher than a
yard above their heads. He ha