"And you love him?" Joan said softly. "You love him, Ellice?"

"With all my heart and soul. I would die for him. It—it sounds foolish, this sort of thing is foolish, the kind of words a silly girl would say, yet it is the truth."

"I think it is," Joan said. "But then, dear, if he loves me, he could not love you?"

"I think he might," Ellice said softly.

She was thinking of the morning, of the look she had seen in his eyes, the awakening look of a man who sees things he has been blind to.

"I think he might," her heart echoed. "I think he might, in time, in a little time." And did not know, could not guess, that even at this moment Johnny Everard, sitting alone in his little study with untended papers strewn about him, was thinking of her—thinking of the look he had seen in her eyes that very day, out in the sunshine of the fields.

"So you came to me to tell me. It was brave of you?"

"I had to come. I could not have come if you had been different from what you are."

"Then, even though I am taking away the man you love from you, you do not hate me?"

"Hate you? Sometimes I think I wished I could—but I could not. If I had hated you, if I had thought you cold and hard to all the world, I would not be here. I have come to plead to you because you are generous and honest, true and good. I could not have come otherwise."

"What must I do, little Ellice?"

"Tell him the truth, if there is—"

"There is—yet that could never come to anything."

"Why not?"

"Because—ah, you can't understand."

"Still, your heart is not your own; you could never give it to Johnny Everard."

"And I must tell him so, and then—"

"And then you will ask him if he would be content to live all his life without love, knowing that he will never, never win your heart, because it would be impossible."

"But I have given him my promise, Ellice."

"I know, I know; and you will not break it, because you could not break a promise. But you will tell him this, and offer him his freedom; it will be for him to decide."

Joan stood for many moments in silence, her hand still resting on the girl's shoulder. Then she drew Ellice to her; she thrust back the shining hair, and kissed the girl's forehead. "I think—yes, I think I shall do all this, Ellice," she said.



CHAPTER XLIV

POISON

"Johnny! Johnny! Have you gone to sleep, dear? There is someone here to see you."

"Eh?" Johnny started into wakefulness, he huddled his untidy papers together. "I must have been dozing off. I was thinking. Con, is Gipsy back yet?"

"Not yet, and I am getting a little anxious about her; it is almost dusk. But there is someone here asking for you."

"Who?"

"A man, a—a—gentleman, I suppose. He looks as if he has been drinking, though."

"A nice sort of visitor for a Sunday evening. What is his name, Con?"

"Slotman."

"Don't know it. I suppose I'd better see him. Wait, I'll light the lamp. If Ellice isn't back soon I shall go and hunt for her. Do you know which direction she went in?"

"I—I think—" Connie hesitated; she was never any good at concealment. "I think she went towards Starden."

"Then when we've got rid of this fellow I'll get out the car and go and find her. Show him in, Con."

Mr. Philip Slotman, looking shaken, bearing on his face several patches of court plaster, which were visible, and in his breast a black fury that was invisible, came in.

"Mr. Slotman?"

"Yes, you are Mr. Everard?"

Johnny nodded pleasantly. "If it is business, Sunday evening is hardly the time—"

"It is personal and private business, Mr. Everard."

The man, Johnny decided, was not, as Con had supposed, drunk, but he had evidently been in the wars. It was surprising the number of places in which he seemed to be wounded. He walked stiffly, he carried his right arm stiffly. His face was decorated with plaster, and his obviously very good clothes were torn; for what Hugh Alston had commenced so ably last night, Rundle had completed this morning.

"It is private and personal, my business with you. I understand you are engaged to be married to a lady in whom I have felt some interest."

Johnny looked up and stiffened.

"Well?"

"I allude to Miss Joan Meredyth, for some time engaged by me as a typist in my city office."

"Well?"

"Miss Meredyth did not always hold the position in society that she does now."

"I am aware of that."

"There may be a great deal that you are not aware of," said Slotman; and Slotman was quivering with rage at the indignities he had been subjected to.

"You will forgive me," said Johnny, "but I do not propose to discuss my future wife with a stranger—with anyone at all, in fact, and certainly not with a stranger."

"And you will forgive me," said Slotman, "but when you have heard what I have to say, I very much doubt if you will regard Miss Joan Meredyth in the light of your future wife."

Johnny moved towards the door and opened it.

"I think it will be better if you go," he said quietly.

"If you do, you will be sorry when it is too late. I come here as a friend—"

"You will go!"

"In June, nineteen hundred and eighteen, when Joan Meredyth was a girl at school—"

"I have told you that I will not listen."

"She gave it out that she was leaving England for Australia. She never went in reality, she—

"Once more I order you to go before I—"

"In reality she was living with Mr. Hugh Alston as his wife—"

Philip Slotman laughed nervously.

"Liar!"

"I had to tell you in spite of yourself, and it is true. It is true. Ask Lady Linden of Cornbridge; she knows. She believes to this day that Joan Meredyth and Alston were married, and they never were. I have searched the registers at Marlbury and—"

"Will you go? You seem to have been hurt. You have probably carried this lying story elsewhere and have received what you merited. I hardly like to touch you now, but unless you go—"

"I am going." Slotman moved stiffly towards the door. "Ask Lady Linden of Cornbridge. She believes to this day that Joan Meredyth is Hugh Alston's wife."

"By heavens! If you don't go—"

Slotman glanced at him; he saw that he was over-stepping the danger-line. Yes, he must go, and quickly, so he went. But he had planted the venom; he had left it behind him. He had forced this man to hear, even though he would not listen.

"First blow," Slotman thought, "the first blow at her! And I ain't done yet! no, I ain't done yet. I'll make her writhe—"

He paused. He had not carried out his intention in full, this man had not given him time. Of course, if it was only Joan's money that this fellow Everard was after, the story would make little or no difference. The marriage would go on all the same, if it was a matter of money, but—

Philip Slotman retraced his painful steps. Once again he tapped on the door of Buddesby.

"There was something that I wished to say to Mr. Everard that I entirely forgot—a small matter," he said to the servant. "Don't trouble, I know the way."

He pushed past the girl into the house. Johnny, staring before him into vacancy, trying to realise this incredible, impossible thing that the man had told him, started. He looked up. In the doorway stood Mr. Slotman.

"By Heaven!" said Johnny, and sprang up. "If you don't go—"

"Wait! You don't think I should be such a fool as to come to you with a lying story, a story that could not be substantiated? What I have told you is the truth. You may not believe it, because you don't want to. You are marrying a young lady with ample possessions; that may weigh with you. Now, rightly or wrongly, I hold that Miss Meredyth owes me a certain sum of money. I want that money. It doesn't matter to me whether I get it from her or from you. If you like to pay her debt, I will guarantee silence. I shall carry this true story no further if you will undertake to pay me immediately following your marriage with her the sum of ten thousand—"

In spite of his stiffness and his sores, Mr. Slotman turned; he fled, he ran blindly down the hall, undid the hall door, and let himself out, and then without a glance behind, he fled across the wide garden till he reached the road, panting and shaking. And now for the first time he looked back, and as he did so a blinding white glare seemed to strike his eyes; he staggered, and tried to spring aside. Then something struck him, and the black world about him seemed to vomit tongues of red and yellow flame.

The occupants of the fast-travelling touring car felt the horrible jolt the car gave. A woman shrieked. The chauffeur shouted an oath born of fear and horror as he applied his brakes. He stood up, yet for a moment scarcely dared to look back. The woman in the car was moaning with the shock of it; and when he looked he saw something lying motionless, a dark patch against the dim light on the road.



CHAPTER XLV

THE GUIDING HAND

Tom Arundel opened his eyes to the sunshine. He had left behind him a world of darkness and of pain, a curiously jumbled unreal world, in which it seemed to him that he had played the part of a thing that was being dragged by unseen hands in a direction that he knew he must not go, a direction against which he fought with all his strength. And yet, in spite of all his efforts, he knew himself to be slipping, slowly but surely slipping.

Then out of the blackness and chaos grew something real and tangible, a pair of small white hands, and on the finger of one of these hands was a ring that he remembered well, for it was a ring that he himself had placed on that finger, and the hands were held out to him, and he clutched at them.

Yet still the fight was not over, still the unseen force dragged and tugged at him, yet he knew that he was winning, because of the little white hands that yet possessed such wonderful strength.

And now he lay, wide-eyed in the sunshine, and the blackness and chaos were gone, but he could still see the hands, for one of them was clasped in his own, and lifting his eyes he saw the face that he knew must be there—a pale face, thinner than when he had seen it last, a face that had lost some of its childish prettiness. Yet the eyes had lost nothing, but had gained much. There was tenderness and pity and joy too in them.

"Marjorie," he said, and the weakness of his own voice surprised him, and he lay wondering if it were he who had spoken. "Thank you," he said. He was thanking her for the help those little hands had given him, yet she was not to know that. So for a long time he lay, his breath gentle and regular, the small hand clasped in his own. And now he was away in dreams, not the black and terrifying dreams of just now, but dreams of peace and of a happiness that might never be. And in those dreams she whom he loved bent over him and kissed him on the lips, and said something to him that set the thin blood leaping in his veins.

Tom Arundel opened his eyes again, and knew that it had been no dream. Her lips were still on his; her face, rosy now, almost as of old, was touching his.

"Marjorie," he whispered, "you told me—"

"I told you what was not true, but I thought it was—oh, I believed it was, dear. I believed it was the truth—but I knew afterwards it was not."

"I—I got hurt, didn't I? I can't remember—I remember but dimly—a horse, Marjorie. You don't think—you don't think I did that on purpose after what you said?"

"No, no!" she said. "I know better. Perhaps I did think it, but oh, Tom, I was not worth it! I was not worth it!"

"You are worth all the world to me," he said, "all the world and more."

Lady Linden opened the door. She came in, treading softly; she came to the bedside and looked at him and then at the girl.

"You were talking. I heard your voice. Was he conscious?"

"Yes."

"Thank God!" Lady Linden looked at the girl severely. "I suppose you will be the next invalid—women of your type always overdo it. How many nights is it since you had your clothes off?"

"That does not matter now."

"By rights you should go to bed at once."

"Aunt, I shall not leave him."

Lady Linden sniffed. "Very well; I can do nothing with you."

"Defiant!" she thought to herself. "She is getting character, that girl, after all, and about time. Well, it doesn't matter, now that Tom will live."

Lady Linden went downstairs. "Obstinate and defiant, new role—very well, I am content. She is developing character, and that is a great thing."

He was going to live. It was more than hope now, it was certainty, after days, even weeks of anxiety, of watching and waiting; and this bright morning Lady Linden felt and looked ten years younger as she stepped out into the garden to bully her hirelings.

Jordan, her ladyship's coachman, was sunning himself at the stable door. He took his pipe out hurriedly and hid it behind his back.

"Jordan," said Lady Linden, "you are an old man."

"Not so wonderful old, my lady."

"You have lived all your life with horses."

"With 'osses mainly, my lady."

"How long would it take you, Jordan, to learn to drive a motor car?"

"Me?" He gasped at her in sheer astonishment.

"Jordan, we are both old, but we must move with the times. Horses are dangerous brutes. I have taken a dislike to them. I shall never sit behind another unless it is in a hearse—and then I shan't sit. Jordan, you shall learn to drive a car."

"Shall I?" thought Jordan as her ladyship turned away. "We'll see about that."

Again Tom opened his eyes, and he saw that face above him, and even as he looked the head was bent lower and lower till once again the red lips touched his own.

"Marjorie, is it only pity?" he whispered.

But she shook her head. "It is love, all my love—I know now. It is all ended. I know the truth. Oh, Tom, it—it was you all the time, and after all it was only you!"



CHAPTER XLVI

"—SHE HAS GIVEN!"

Never so slowly as to-day had John Everard driven the six and a half miles that divided Buddesby and Little Langbourne from Starden. Never had his frank and open and cheerful face been so clouded and overcast. Many worries, many doubts and fears and uncertainties, were at work in John Everard's mind.

No doubts and uncertainties of anyone but of himself. It was himself—his own feelings, his own belief in himself, his own belief in his love that he was doubting. So he drove very slowly the six and a half miles to Starden, because he had many questions to ask of himself, questions to which answers did not come readily.

"Gipsy is right, she always is," he thought. "She is finer-minded, better, more generous than I am. Her mind could not harbour one doubt of anyone she loved, and I—" He frowned.

Helen Everard, from an upper window, saw his arrival, and watching him as he drove up the approach to the house, marked the frown on his brow, the lack of his usual cheerfulness.

"There is something wrong; there seems to be nothing, but something wrong all the time," she thought with a sigh.

"If, after all the trouble I have taken, my plans should come to nothing, I shall be bitterly disappointed. I blame Connie. Con's unworldliness is simply silly. Oh, these people!"

"It is a long time since I saw you, Johnny—four or five days, isn't it?" Joan said. She held out her hand to him, and he took it. He seemed to hesitate, and then drew a little closer and kissed her cheek.

Something wrong. She too saw it, but it did not disturb her as it did Helen.

"Yes, four days—five—I forget," he said, scarcely realising what an admission was this from him, who awhile ago had counted every hour jealously that had kept them apart.

For a few minutes they talked of indifferent things, each knowing it for a preliminary of something to follow.

He had come to tell her something, Joan felt.

"She has something to say to me," Johnny knew. So for a few minutes they fenced, and then it was he who broke away.

He rose, and began to move about the room, as a man disturbed in his mind usually does. She sat calm and expectant, watching him, a faint smile on her lips, a kindness and a gentleness in her face that made it inexpressibly sweet.

"I think, Johnny, you have something to say to me."

"Something that I hate saying. Joan, last night a man—a man I have never seen before—came to see me."

She stiffened. The faint smile was gone; her face had become as a mask, hard and cold, icy.

"Yes?"

"A man who had something to tell me—you will do me the justice to believe that I did not wish to hear him, that I tried to silence him, but he would not be silenced. He told me lies! foul lies about you! lies!" Johnny said passionately, "things which I, knowing you, know to be untrue. Yet he told them. I drove him out of the place. Then he came back. He had remembered what his errand was—blackmail. He came to me for money. But—but he did not stay, and then—" Johnny paused. He had reached the window, and stood staring out into the garden, yet seeing nothing of its beauty.

"You know," he went on, "that I do not ask you nor expect you to deny—there is no need. What he said I know to be untrue. The man was a villain, one of the lowest, but he has been paid."

"Paid?" she said. She stared.

"Not in money," Johnny said shortly, "in another way."

"You—you struck him?"

"No. I would have; but he saw the danger and fled from it—fled from the punishment that I would have meted out to him to a harder that Fate had in store for him."

"I don't understand."

"Just outside my gate he was knocked down by a car and very badly injured; it is hardly probable that he will live. The people who knocked him down came hammering on my door. We got him to the Cottage Hospital. In spite of everything I felt sorry for the poor wretch—but that has nothing to do with it now. I came to tell you what happened."

"And yet do not ask me to explain?"

"Of course not!" He swung round and faced her for a moment. "Do you think I would put that indignity on you, Joan?"

"You are very generous, Johnny—why?"

She waited, listening expectantly for his answer. It was some time in coming.

"I am not generous. I simply know that for you to be other than honourable and innocent, pure and good, would be an impossibility."

"Why do you know that?"

"Because I know you."

She smiled. The answer she had almost dreaded to hear had not come. Yet it should have been so simple, so ample an answer to her question. Had he said, "Because I love you," it would have been enough; but he had said, "Because I know you"; and so she smiled.

"Johnny, I have something to say to you. Do you remember the day when you asked me to be your wife? I was frank and open to you then, was I not?"

"You always are."

"I told you that if you wished it I would agree, but that I did not love you as a woman should love the man to whom she gives her life."

"I do not forget that."

"Perhaps in your heart you harboured a hope that one day the love that I denied you then might come?"

"I think I did."

"You were giving so much and asking for so little in return. That was not fair, and it would not be fair for me to allow you to harbour a hope that can never come true."

He turned slowly and looked at her.

"A woman cannot love—twice," she said slowly.

Johnny Everard flushed, then paled.

"Why do you say that?"

"Because it is true." She paused; the red dyed her cheeks. "What you were told last night were lies—poor lies. You do not ask me to deny them, dear, and so I won't. Yet, behind those lies, there was a little truth. There is a man, and I cared for him—care for him now and always shall care for him. He has been nothing to me, and never will be; but because he lived, because he and I have met, the hope that you had in your heart that day, can come to nothing. And now—now I have something more to tell you. It is this. You, who can love so finely, must ask for and have love in return. You think you love me, yet because I do not respond you will tire in time of that love. You will realise how bad a bargain you have made, and then you will regret it. Is there not someone"—her voice had grown low and soft—"someone who can and does give you all the love your heart craves for, someone who will be grateful to you for your love, and who will repay a thousandfold? Would not that be better than a long hopeless fight against lovelessness, even—even if you loved her a little less than you believe you love—me? Remember that it would rest with you and not with another, you who are generous, who could not refuse to give when so much is given to you." Joan's voice faltered for a moment. "It would be your own heart on which you would have to make the call, Johnny, not on the heart of another. You would have more command over your own heart than you ever could over the heart of another."

"Joan, what do you mean? What does this mean?"

"I am trying so hard to be plain," she said almost pitifully.

"Who is this other you are talking about, this other—who loves me?"

She was silent.

"What do you know of her, Joan, this other?"

And still she was silent, for how could she betray Ellice's secret?

"Tell me," he said.

"Don't you know? Can't you guess?"

His face flushed. A week ago he might have answered, "I cannot guess!" To-day he knew the answer, yet how did Joan know?

"I gave you my promise," she said, "and I will abide by that promise. It is for you to decide, and no one else. My life, your own and—and the life of another is in your hands—three futures, Johnny, decide—"

"You want to—to give me up?"

"Is that generous?"

"No, it isn't," he admitted. He took a turn up and down the room. "And you say this other—this girl—cares for me?"

"I know she does?"

"Did she tell you?"

"Must I answer?"

"Why not?"

"Why not?" Joan repeated. "Yes, she did. She came to me, openly and frankly, straightforward child that she is, and she said to me, 'Why are you marrying him, not loving him? If you loved him, and he loved you, I would not come to you; but you do not love him, and it is not fair. You are taking all and giving nothing!' And, she was right!"

"And she—she—" he said in a low voice, "would give—"

"Has given."

A silence fell between them. Then he turned to her, and it seemed as if the cloud had lifted from him. He held out his hands and smiled at her.

"I understand. You and she are right. A starved love could not live for ever; it must die. Better it should be strangled almost at birth, Joan. So—so this is good-bye?"

She shook her head. "Friends, always, Johnny," she said.

"Friends always, then."

She came close to him. She lifted her hand suddenly, and thrust back the hair from his forehead, she looked him in the eyes and, smiling, kissed him on the brow.

"Go and find your happiness—a far, far better than I could ever offer you."

"And you?"

She shook her head, and her eyes, looking beyond him into the garden, were dreamy and strangely soft.

"Tell me about that man, Johnny," she said. "Will you take me back to Little Langbourne with you?"

"Why?"

"To see him."

"But he maligned, he lied—"

"He is hurt, and why should I hate him? You did not believe. Will you take me back with you?"

"You know I will."

Helen, watching from the upper window, saw them drive away together, never had they seemed better friends. The cloud had passed completely away, and so too had all Helen's plans; yet she did not know it.



CHAPTER XLVII

"AS WE FORGIVE—"

Slotman opened dazed eyes and looked up into a face that might well have been the face of an angel, so soft, so pitying, so tender was its expression.

"Joan!" he whispered.

She nodded and smiled.

"But," he said—"but—" and hesitated. "Joan, I went to Buddesby to see—"

"I know."

"And yet you come here?"

"Of course. Hush! you must not talk. You are going to get well and strong again. The Matron says I am allowed to come sometimes and see you, and sit beside you, but you must not talk yet. Later on we are going to talk about the future."

He lay staring at her. He could not understand. How could such a mind as his understand the workings of such a mind as hers? But she was here, she knew and she forgave, and there was comfort in her presence.

God knew he had suffered. God knew it.

"When you are better, stronger, you and I are going to talk, not till then; but I want to tell you this now. I want to help you, all the past is past. I knew about that night, about your visit. It does not matter; it is all gone by. It is only the future that matters, and in the future you may find that I will give and help willingly what I would not have given under compulsion. Now, hush for the Matron is coming." She smiled down at him.

"I don't understand," Slotman said; "I'll try and understand." He turned his face away, realising a sense of shame such as he had never felt before.

He had been her enemy, and yet perhaps in his way, a bad and vile way, selfish and dishonourable, he had loved her; but as she had said, all that was of the past. Now she sat beside the man, broken in limb and in fortune, a wreck of what he had been; and for him her only feeling was of pity, and already in her mind she was forming plans for his future. For she had said truly she could give of her own free will and in charity and sympathy that which could never be forced from her.

Connie looked at her brother curiously.

* * * * *

"I saw you just now. You drove past the gate with Joan. You took her to Langbourne, didn't you?"

"To the hospital. She went to see that fellow, Con."

"He told you something about Joan last night, Johnny?"

"He lied about the truest, purest woman who walks this earth."

"She is incapable of evil," Con said quietly.

"Utterly. Con, I have something to tell you."

She turned eagerly.

"It is ended," he said quietly—"our engagement. Joan and I ended it to-day—not in anger, not in doubt, dear, but liking and admiring each other I think more than ever before, and—and, Con—" He paused.

"Oh, I am glad, glad," she said, "glad! Have you told—her?"

He shook his head.

"Will you wait here, John? I will send her to you."

John Everard's face coloured. "I will wait here for her, for Gipsy," he said. "Send her here to me, and I will tell her, Con."

And a few moments later she came. She stood here in the doorway looking at him, just as she had looked at him from that same place that night, that night when a light had dawned upon his darkness.

And now, because his eyes were widely opened at last, he could see the tell-tale flush in her cheeks, the suspicious brightness in her eyes, and it seemed to him that her love for him was as a magnet that drew his heart towards her.

"Con has told you?"

She nodded silently.

Then suddenly he stretched out his arms to her, a moment more and she was in them, her face against his breast.



CHAPTER XLVIII

HER PRIDE'S LAST FIGHT

"... I came to Starden because I believed you might need me. You did, and the help that you wanted I gave gladly and willingly. Now your enemy is removed; he can do you no more harm. You will hear, or perhaps have heard why, and so I am no longer necessary to you, Joan, and because I seem to be wanted in my own place I am going back. Yet should you need me, you have but to call, and I will come. You know that. You know that I who love you am ever at your service. From now onward your own heart shall be your counsellor. You will act as it dictates, if you are true to yourself. Yet, perhaps in the future as in the past, your pride may prove the stronger. It is for you and only you to decide. Good-bye,

"HUGH."

She had found this letter on her return from Little Langbourne. She had gone hurrying, as a young girl in her eagerness might, down to Mrs. Bonner's little cottage, to learn that she was too late. He had gone.

Mrs. Bonner, with almost tears in her eyes, told her.

"Yes, miss. He hev gone, and rare sorry I be, a better gentleman I never had in these rooms."

Gone! With only this letter, no parting word, without seeking to see her, to say good-bye. The chill of her cold pride fell on Joan. Send for him! Never! never! He had gone when he might have stayed—when, had he been here now, she would have told him that she was free.

Very slowly she walked back to the house, to meet Helen's questioning eyes.

"I am glad, dear, that there seems to be a better understanding between you and Johnny," Helen said.

"There is a perfect understanding between us. Johnny is not going to marry me. He is choosing someone who will love him more and understand him better than I could."

"Then—then, after all, it is over? You and he are to part?"

"Have parted—as lovers, but not as friends."

"And after all I have done," Helen said miserably.

Hugh had gone home. He had had a letter from Lady Linden telling about the accident to Tom Arundel, about his serious illness, and Marjorie's devoted nursing. And now he was shaping his course for Hurst Dormer. He had debated in his mind whether he should wait and see her, and then had decided against it.

"She knows that I love her, and she loves me. She is letting her pride stand between us. Everard is too good and too fine a fellow to keep her bound by a promise if he thought it would hurt her to keep it. Her future and Everard's and mine must lay in her own hands." And so, doing violence to his feelings and his desires, he had left Starden, and now was back in Hurst Dormer, wandering about, looking at the progress the workmen had made during his absence. He had come home, and though he loved the place, its loneliness weighed heavily on him. The rooms seemed empty. He wanted someone to talk things over with, to discuss this and that. He was not built to be self-centred.

For two days and two nights he bore with Hurst Dormer and its shadows and its solitude, and then he called out the car and motored over to Cornbridge.

"Oh, it's you," said her ladyship. "I suppose you got my letter?"

"Yes; I had it sent on to me."

"It's a pity you don't stay at home now and again."

"Perhaps I shall in future."

She looked at him. He was unlike himself, careworn and weary, and a little ill.

"Tom is mending rapidly, a wonderful constitution; but it was touch and go. Marjorie was simply wonderful, I'll do her that credit. Between ourselves, Hugh, I always regarded Marjorie as rather weak, namby-pamby, early Victorian—you know what I mean; but she's a woman, and it has touched her. She wouldn't leave him. Honestly, I believe she did more for him than all the doctors."

"I am sure she did."

Marjorie was changed; her face was thinner, some of its colour gone. Yet the little she had lost was more than atoned for in the much that she had gained. She held his hand, she looked him frankly in the eyes.

"So it is all right, little girl, all right now?"

She nodded. "It is all right. I am happier than I deserve to be. Oh, Hugh, I have been weak and foolish, wavering and uncertain. I can see it all now, but now at last I know—I do know my own mind."

"And your own heart?"

"And my own heart."

She wondered as she looked at him if ever he could have guessed what had been in her mind that day when she had gone to Hurst Dormer to see him. How full of love for him her heart had been then! And then she remembered what he had said, those four words that had ended her dream for ever—"Better than my life." So he loved Joan, and now she knew that she too loved with her whole heart.

Death had been very close, and perhaps it had been pity for that fine young life that seemed to be so near its end that had awakened love. Yet, whatever the cause, she knew now that her love for Tom had come to stay.

"And Joan?" Marjorie asked.

"Joan?" he said. "Joan, she is in her own home."

"And her heart is still hard against you, Hugh?"

"Her pride is still between us, Marjorie," he said, and quickly turned the conversation, and a few minutes later was up in the bedroom talking cheerily enough to Tom.

"It's all right, Alston, everything is all right. Lady Linden wanted to shoot the horse; but I wouldn't have it. I owe him too much—you understand, Alston, don't you? Everything is all right between Marjorie and me."

And then Hugh went back to Hurst Dormer—thank, Heaven there was some happiness in this world! There was happiness at Cornbridge, and after Cornbridge Hurst Dormer seemed darker and more solitary than ever.

It was while she had been talking to Hugh that Marjorie had made up her mind.

"I am going to tell Joan the whole truth, the whole truth," she thought. And Hugh was scarcely out of the house before Marjorie sat down to write her letter to Joan.

"... I know that you have always blamed him for what was never his fault. He did it because he is generous and unselfish. He loved me in those days. I know that it could not have been the great abiding love; it was only liking that turned to fondness. Yet he wanted to marry me, Joan, and when he knew that there was someone else, and that he stood in the way of our happiness, the whole plan was arranged, and we had to find a name, you understand. And he asked me to suggest one, and I thought of yours, because it is the prettiest name I know; and he, Hugh, never dreamed that it belonged to a living woman. And so it was used, dear, and all this trouble and all this misunderstanding came about. I always wanted to tell you the truth, but he wouldn't let me, because he was afraid that if Aunt got to hear of it, she might be angry and send Tom away. But now I know she would not, and so I am telling you everything. The fault was mine. And yet, you know, dear, I had no thought of angering or of offending you. Write to me and tell me you forgive me. And oh, Joan, don't let pride come between you and the man you love, for I think he is one of the finest men I know, the best and straightest.

"MARJORIE."

Marjorie felt that she had lifted a weight from her mind when she put this letter in the post.

Long, long ago Joan had acquitted Hugh of any intention to offend or annoy her by the use of her name. Yet why had he never told her the truth, told her that it had never been his doing at all? She read Marjorie's letter, and then thrust it away from her. Why had he not written this? Did he care less now than he had? Had she tired him out with her coldness and her pride? Perhaps that was it.

Yesterday Ellice had come over on the old bicycle—Ellice with shining eyes and pink cheeks, glowing with happiness and joy, and Ellice had hugged her tightly, and tried to whisper thanks that would not come.

She was happy now. Marjorie was happy. Only she seemed to be cut off from happiness. Why had he gone without a word, just those few written lines? He had not cared so much, after all.

And so the days went by. Joan wrote a loving, sympathetic letter to Marjorie. She quite understood, and she did not blame Hugh; she blamed no one.

It was a long letter, dealing mainly with her life, with the village, with the things she was doing and going to do. But of the future—nothing; of the past, in so far as Hugh Alston was concerned—nothing.

And when Marjorie read the letter she read of an unsatisfied, unhappy spirit, of a girl whose whole heart yearned and longed for love, and whose pride held her in check and condemned her to unhappiness.

Scarcely a day passed but Joan drove over to Little Langbourne. Philip Slotman came to look for her, and counted it a long unhappy day if she failed him; but it was not often.

She had discovered that he was well-nigh penniless, and that it would be months before he would be fit to work again. And so she had quietly supplied all his needs.

"When you are well and strong again, you shall go back. You shall have the capital you want, and you will do well. I know that. I shall lend you the money to start afresh, and you will pay me back when you can."

"Joan, I wonder if there are many women like you?"

"Many better than I," she said—"many happier."

At Buddesby she was welcomed by a radiant girl with happy eyes, a girl who could not make enough of her, and there Joan saw a home life and happiness she had never known—a happiness that set her hungry heart yearning and longing with a longing that was intolerable and unbearable.

"Send for me, and I will come," he had written; and she had not sent. She would not, pride forbade it, and yet—yet to be happy as Ellice was happy, to feel his arms about her, to rest her head against his breast, to know that during all the years to come he would be here by her side, that loneliness would never touch her again.

"I won't!" she said. "I won't! If he needs me, it is he who must come to me. I will not send for him."

It was her pride's last fight, a fine fight it made. For days she struggled against the yearning of her heart, against the wealth of love, pent-up and stored within; valiantly and bravely pride fought.

To-day she had been to the hospital. She had stopped, as she often did, at Buddesby. There was talk of a marriage there. Many catalogues and price-lists had come through the post, and Con and Ellice were busy with them. For they were not very rich, and money must be made to go a long way; and into their conclave they drew Joan, who for a time forgot everything in this new interest.

They had all been very busy when the door had opened and Johnny Everard had come in, and, looking up, Joan caught a look that passed between Johnny and Ellice—just a look, yet it spoke volumes. It laid bare the secret of both hearts.

Later, when she said good-bye, he walked to the gate where her car was waiting. They had said but little, for Johnny seemed shy and constrained in her presence.

"Joan, I have much to be very, very grateful to you for," he said, as he held her hand. "You were right. Life without love would be impossible, and you have made life very possible for me."

She was thinking of this during the lonely drive back to Starden; always his words came back to her. Life without love would be impossible, and then it was that the battle ended, that pride retired vanquished from the field.

"I want you to come back to me because I am so lonely. Please come back and forgive.

"JOAN."

The message that, in the end, she must write was written and sent.

And now that pride had broken down, was gone for ever, so far as this man was concerned, it was a very loving anxious-eyed, trembling woman who watched for the coming of the man that she loved and needed, the man who meant all the happiness this world could give her.

* * * * *

She had called to him, and this must be his answer. No slow-going trains, no tedious broken journeys, no wasted hours of delay—the fastest car, driven at reckless speed, yet with all due care that none should suffer because of his eagerness and his happiness.

It seemed to him such a very pitiful, humble little appeal, an appeal that went straight to his heart—so short an appeal that he could remember every word of it, and found himself repeating it as his car swallowed the miles that lay between them.

He asked no questions of himself. She would not have sent for him had she not been free to do so. He knew that.

And now the landscape was growing familiar, a little while, and they were running through Starden village. Villagers who had come to know him touched their hats. They passed Mrs. Bonner's little cottage, and now through the gateway, the gates standing wide as in welcome and expectation of his coming.

And she, watching for him, saw his coming, and her heart leaped with the joy of it. Helen Everard saw, too, and guessed what it meant.

"Go into the morning-room, Joan. I will send him to you there."

And so it was in the morning-room he found her. Flushed and bright-eyed, trembling with happiness and the joy of seeing him, gone for ever the pride and the scorn, she was only a girl who loved him dearly, who needed him much. She had fought the giant pride, and had beaten it for ever for his sake, and now he was here smiling at her, his arms stretched out to her.

"You wanted me at last, Joan," he said. "You called me, darling, and I have come."

"I want you. I always want you. Never, never leave me again, Hugh—never leave me again. I love you so, and need you so."

And then his arms were about her and hers about his neck, and she who had been so cold, so proud, so scornful, was remembering Johnny Everard's words, "Life without love would be impossible."

And now life was very, very possible to her.

THE END