on his
arm, with her clear pale face and bosom and black high-piled hair, and
her velvet and lace, and a rope of pearls.

"Why," said the old nun, smiling, "you look a pair of lovers."

Then presently the three went together up to the Hall.

* * * *

An hour or two passed away; the Paschal moon was rising high over the
tall yew hedge behind the Italian garden; and the Hall lay beneath it
with silver roofs and vane; and black shadows under the eaves and in the
angles. The tall oriel window of the Hall looking on to the terrace shone
out with candlelight; and the armorial coats of the Maxwells and the
families they had married with glimmered in the upper panes. From the
cloister wing there shone out above the curtains lines of light in Lady
Maxwell's suite of rooms, and the little oak parlour beneath, as well as
from one or two other rooms; but the rest of the house, with the
exception of the great hall and the servants' quarters, was all dark. It
was as if the interior life had shifted westwards, leaving the remainder
desolate. The gardens to the south were silent, for the night breeze had
dropped; and the faint ripple of the fountain within the cloister-court
was the only sound that broke the stillness. And once or twice the sleepy
chirp of a bird nestling by his mate in the deep shrubberies showed that
the life of the spring was beating out of sight.

And then at last the door in the west angle of the terrace, between the
cloister wing and the front of the house, opened, and a flood of mellow
light poured out on to the flat pavement. A group stood within the little
oaken red-tiled lobby; Lady Maxwell and her sister, slender and dignified
in their dark evening dresses and ruffs; Anthony holding his cap, and
Isabel with a lace shawl over her head, and at the back the white hair
and ruddy face of old Mr. Barnes in his cassock at the bottom of the
stairs.

As Mistress Margaret opened the door and looked out, Lady Maxwell took
Isabel in her arms and kissed her again and again. Then Anthony took the
old lady's hand and kissed it, but she threw her other hand round him and
kissed him too on the forehead. Then without another word the brother and
sister came out into the moonlight, passed down the side of the cloister
wing, and turning once to salute the group who waited, framed and bathed
in golden light, they turned the corner to the Dower House. Then the door
closed; the