f shadow. She felt fascinated still by that
mingling of a boy's weakness and sentiment and of a man's fire and
purpose; and she sank down on her knees before the hearth and looked
wonderingly at her hands which he had kissed so ardently, now transparent
and flaming against the light as if with love. Then as she looked at the
red heart of the fire the sudden leaping of her heart quieted, and there
crept on her a glow of steady desire to lean on the power of this tall
young lover of hers; she was so utterly alone without him it seemed as if
there were no choice left; he had come and claimed her in virtue of the
master-law, and she--how much had she yielded? She had not promised; but
she had shown evidently her real heart in those half dozen words; and he
had interpreted them for her; and she dared not in honesty repudiate his
interpretation. And so she knelt there, clasping and unclasping her
hands, in a whirl of delight and trembling; all the bounds of that sober
inner life seemed for the moment swept away; she almost began to despise
its old coldnesses and limitations. How shadowy after all was the love of
God, compared with this burning tide that was bearing her along on its
bosom!...

She sank lower and lower into herself among the black draperies, clasping
those slender hands tightly across her breast.

Suddenly a great log fell with a crash, the red glow turned into leaping
flames; the whole dark room seemed alive with shadows that fled to and
fro, and she knelt upright quickly and looked round her, terrified and
ashamed.--What was she doing here? Was it so soon then that she was
setting aside the will of her father, who trusted and loved her so well,
and who lay out there in the chancel vault? Ah! she had no right here in
this room--Hubert's room now, with his cap and whip lying across the
papers and the estate-book, and his knife and the broken jesses on the
seat of the chair beside her. There was his step overhead again. She must
be gone before he came back.

There was high excitement on the estate and in the village a week or two
later when the rumour of Sir Nicholas' return was established, and the
paper had been pinned up to the gatehouse stating, in Lady Maxwell's own
handwriting, that he would be back sometime in the week before Advent
Sunday. Reminiscences were exchanged of the glorious day when the old
knight came of age, over forty years ago; of the sports on the green, of
the quintain-tilting for the g