"Oh! I knew--I knew--when I first saw your face. I had been so miserable
all day--and then you looked at me--and I wanted to tell you all. Oh, I
adore you--I adore you!" Their faces met. Ashe tasted a moment of
rapture; and knew himself free at last of the great company of poets and
of lovers.
They slipped back to the house, and Ashe saw her disappear by a door on
the farther side of the orangery--noiselessly, without a sound. Except
that just at the last she drew him to her and breathed a sacred whisper
in his ear.
"Oh! what--what will Lady Tranmore say?"
Then she fled. But she left her question behind her, and when the dawn
came Ashe found that he had spent half the night in trying anew to frame
some sort of an answer to it.
PART II
THREE YEARS AFTER
"The world an ancient murderer is."
VII
"Her ladyship will be in before six, my lady. I was to be sure and ask
you to wait, if you came before, and to tell you that her ladyship had
gone to Madame Fanchette about her dress for the ball."
So said Lady Kitty's maid. Lady Tranmore hesitated, then said she would
wait, and asked that Master Henry might be brought down.
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