ll trouble, a sudden escape from
herself and all things that were oppressing her; without any word said,
a sudden meeting in the shade of the trees, and two where there had
been but one,--a young lover, and a woman who, Heaven help her, was
young too, and could still drop her burden off her shoulders and for a
moment forget everything, except the arm that supported her, and the
whisper close to her ear, and the melting of all her bonds, the melting
of her very being into his, the heavenly ease and forgetfulness, the
_Vita Nuova_ never known before.

It seemed not herself all laden with shame, but another woman, who
raised her head, and said to him, shaking as it were her bondage from
her: "This is not becoming for you and me. Let us go in. Whatever we
have to encounter together, we must not do it in secret. I must not
linger about here, Theo, like one of my maids."

"Yet stay a moment," he said. Perhaps the maids have the best of it. The
sweet air of the night, the magical light so near them, the contact and
close vicinity, almost unseen of each other, added an ethereal atmosphere
to the everlasting, always continued tale.

'Twas partly love and partly fear,
And partly 'twas a bashful art,
That I might rather feel than see
The swelling of her heart.

After a time, they emerged into the moonlight, slowly moving towards
the house, she leaning upon his arm, he stooping over her, a suggestive
posture. Soames upon the doorsteps could not believe his eyes. He would
have shut up before now, if he had not seen my lady go out. To admire
the moonlight! it did not seem to Soames a very sensible occupation; but
when he saw her coming back, not alone, wonder and horror crept over
him. He watched them with his mouth open, as well as his eyes, and when
he went downstairs and told Black, who had made the horses comfortable
for the night, to go and bring out Mr. Warrender's horse, a shock ran
through the entire house. After all! but then it was possible that he
had always intended to come back and ride his horse home.

Black walked about (very unwillingly and altogether indifferent to
the beauty of the moonlight) for nearly an hour before Warrender came
out. The young man's aspect then was very unlike that of the morning.
Happiness beamed from him as he walked, and Lady Markland came out to
the door to see him start, and called good-night as he rode away.
"Good-night, till to-morrow," he said, turning back as long a