_ that came to
Priorsford!"

"Take a start, Mhor," said Jock, "and I'll race you back."

Lord Bidborough and Jean walked on in silence.

At the garden where once had stood New Place--that "pretty house in
brick and timber"--the shadow of the Norman church lay black on the
white street and beyond it was the velvet darkness of the old trees.

"This," Jean said softly, "must be almost exactly as it was in
Shakespeare's time. He must have seen the shadow of the tower falling
like that, and the trees, and his garden. Perhaps it was on an April
night like this that he wrote:

On such a night
Stood Dido with a willow in her hand
Upon the wild sea-banks and waft her lover
To come again to Carthage."

They had both stopped, and Jean, after a glance at her companion's face,
edged away. He caught her hands and held her there in the shadow.

"The last time we were together, Jean, it was December, dripping rain
and mud, and you would have none of me. To-night--in such a night, Jean,
I come again to you. I love you. Will you marry me?"

"Yes," said Jean--"for I am yours."

For a moment they stood caught up to the seventh heaven, knowing
nothing except that they were together, hearing nothing but the beating
of their own hearts.

Jean was the first to come to herself.

"Everyone's gone home. The boys'll think we are lost.... Oh, Biddy, have
I done right? Are you sure you want me? Can I make you happy?"

"_Can you make me happy_? My blessed child, what a question! Don't you
know that you seem to me almost too dear for my possessing? You are far
too good for me, but I won't give you up now. No, not though all the
King's horses and all the King's men come in array against me. My Jean
... my little Jean."

Jock's comment on hearing of his sister's engagement was that he did
think Richard Plantagenet was above that sort of thing. Later on, when
he had got more used to the idea, he said that, seeing he had to marry
somebody, it was better to be Jean than anybody else.

Mhor, like Gallio, cared for none of these things.

He merely said, "Oh, and will you be married and have a bridescake? What
fun!... You might go with Peter and me to the station and see the London
trains pass. Jock went yesterday and he says he won't go again for three
days. Will you, Jean? Oh, _please_--"

David, at Oxford, sent his sister a letter which she put away among her
chiefest treasures. Safely in his room, with a pen in his hand, he wo