in fact. At times we were good friends, and then
something he would say or do would infuriate me, and I would purposely
make him angry. He had a time and a rule for everything, and I could not
bear rules. Breakfast was on the minute, an hour in his study to attend
to affairs about the place, so many hours in his office at the mills, in
the president's room at the bank, vestry and charity meetings at regular
intervals. No movement in all this country round about was ever set on
foot without him. He was one to be finally reckoned with. And since his
death, many proofs have come to me of the things he did for people of
which the world was ignorant. I have found out at last that his way of
life was, in the main, the right way. But I know now, Honora," he added
soberly, slipping his hand within her arm, "I know now that without you I
never could do all I intend to do."

"Oh, don't say that!" she cried. "Don't say that!"

"Why not?" he asked, smiling at her vehemence. "It is not a confession of
weakness. I had the determination, it is true. I could--I should have
done something, but my deeds would have lacked the one thing needful to
lift them above the commonplace--at least for me. You are the
inspiration. With you here beside me, I feel that I can take up this work
with joy. Do you understand?"

She pressed his hand with her arm.

"Hugh," she said slowly, "I hope that I shall be a help, and not--not a
hindrance."

"A hindrance!" he exclaimed. "You don't know, you can't realize, what you
are to me."

She was silent, and when she lifted her eyes it was to rest them on the
portrait of his mother. And she seemed to read in the sweet, sad eyes a
question--a question not to be put into words. Chiltern, following her
gaze, did not speak: for a space they looked at the portrait together,
and in silence . . . .

From one end of the house to the other they went, Hugh reviving at the
sight of familiar objects a hundred memories of his childhood; and she
trying to imagine that childhood, so different from her own, passed in
this wonderful place. In the glass cases of the gun room, among the
shining, blue barrels which he had used in all parts of the world, was
the little shotgun his father had had made for him when he was twelve
years old. Hugh locked the door after them when they came out, and smiled
as he put the key in his pocket.

"My destroying days are over," he declared.

Honora put on a linen hat and they took the g