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were out of his mouth, likewise remembering that the assertion to which he had just committed himself was a somewhat bold one to make to a daughter of the late Lady Lannowe. Lady Lannowe, however, was no more, and he hastened to resume:

"I will take it upon me to promise that your father will never urge you to marry against your will. As for the mistakes that one may make about one's own feelings, who doesn't make them? Look at my own case, for instance. Once upon a time, as I daresay you know, I fancied myself desperately in love with your sister."

"But surely you were!" exclaimed Monica, raising a pair of amazed and slightly distressed blue eyes to his.

As an honest man, he was constrained to reply, "Yes, I was; but not for long, I think. One clings to these mistakes; one doesn't like admitting them to oneself. Anyhow, I afterwards met somebody for whom I came to care a thousand times more than I had ever cared for her. But my love-affairs are of no interest or importance; I merely alluded to them as a sort of illustration."

Monica nodded. "Don't you think," she asked, "that men may change more easily in that way than women? I know very little about either; only I believe I do know about myself. I shall never marry now." "Yet you don't love Nigel Scarth?"

"Oh, no," she answered in a low voice, and began to walk rather more quickly.

For a distance of forty paces or so he silently scanned what he could see of her face (for she had averted it a little), then asked suddenly, "Monica, is there any man whom you do love?"

It was a most unfair inquiry to make, and her eyes, when she turned them reproachfully towards him, seemed to intimate that she thought it so; but, as if to leave

him in no doubt upon the subject, she retorted, with the sort of defiance which even the meekest of created beings will display when driven into a corner:

"Who is the person for whom you care a thousand times more than you do for Frances?"

Well, if I

He laughed. "Question for question, I admit that you are as much entitled to a reply as I am. answer yours, will you answer mine?"

"If I do," she returned, after a moment of hesitation, "will you promise to ask me nothing more?"

He also hesitated for a moment before giving the required promise, but ended by making it; after which arose the natural difficulty of which of them was to speak first. This might have awaited solution for some little time, had not Monica chanced to drop her basket. He stooped to pick it up for her; their hands met; their eyes met-and then, on a sudden, there was no further need for questions or answers.

"I never was more astonished in my life!" Lord Lannowe declared, about an hour later, when certain avowals had been made to him; "but I am sure I need not tell you, my dear Ned, that I have seldom or never been more pleased." He added presently, in a somewhat rueful undertone, "I don't know what Frances will say."

"I do," answered Gervase calmly. "She will say that it has all been her doing from first to last, and that she is sure it will turn out well, because both Monica and I are such good, docile sort of creatures."

It must be assumed that he knew the lady in whose name he spoke; for that was just what the Duchess of Leith subsequently did say.

CHAPTER XX

VESTIGIA RETRORSUM

"WELL, my dear boy," said old Humphry Tren

chard, when the discreet Bailey, after conducting a visitor into his master's presence, had retired noiselessly, "you have come to explain your conduct of last night, I hope."

"Yes," answered Nigel.

"I am glad of that; for, between ourselves, it seems to me to stand in need of some explanation. I don't want to scold; but I can't help saying that to bounce out of a house where you have been hospitably entertained, without even saying goodnight, is something more than bad manners. It is inviting people to form conjectures as to your motives which may be embarrassing for others as well as for yourself. And that is hardly fair upon the lady, perhaps."

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Perhaps," returned Nigel, "the lady has hardly been fair upon me; but, be that as it may, I am not at all afraid of embarrassing her. And conjectures are of the less importance because I really have so little to conceal. You, at all events, will have had no difficulty in conjecturing what took place last night."

"Not very much," Mr. Trenchard confessed, smiling compassionately and laying his hand upon the young man's wrist, which was within his reach. "She told you, I presume, that if you could not trust her enough

to marry her before her formal reception into your Church she must decline to marry you at all."

"No, she did not say that; you were mistaken about her there, as I told you that you were. What she did was to refuse me unconditionally and unequivocally."

Old Humphry raised his eyebrows. This was unexpected news to him, and he acknowledged that it was. He further acknowledged (though possibly not without a mental reservation) that he was unable to guess what she was driving at.

Nigel sighed rather wearily. "You think her selfish and designing and unprincipled," he remarked. "I have thought her all that myself, and then again I have taken a different view of her. As far as I am concerned, it matters very little now; but I daresay, after all, she flirted with me for the simple reason that she was in love with somebody else and wanted to pique him. If so, she may have succeeded. Now that I am out of it, I almost hope she has; for, in spite of what he says, I suspect that Cuthbert Gretton is fond of her in his heart."

Mr. Trenchard laughed and shook his head, yet looked a trifle uneasy. "Cuthbert is a poor man," he

observed.

"At the present moment, yes; but he may be better off some day. Besides, one need not always impute sordid motives even to people who have not treated one too well. Anyhow, I did not come here to talk about that, but to beg a small favour of you."

"Then you may be quite sure," returned the other unhesitatingly, "that it will be granted if I have it in my power to do as you wish. I hope you know that it is a privilege to me to serve you. But before we say anything more, my dear boy, let me implore you not to act rashly. You have had a great disappointment, a great

blow; I make every allowance for that; but don'tpray don't ask me to aid and abet in some step which may wreck your whole future! "

"My request is only that you will come and stay a few days with me," answered Nigel, after a scarcely perceptible pause which, brief though it was, gave him time to decide against saying what he had been going to say. "Would it bore you very much to come tomorrow? You are quite right about my having had a blow, and——"

As he did not finish his sentence, Mr. Trenchard briskly finished it for him.

"And you don't want to sit brooding over it all by yourself. Of course you don't, and of course I shall be only too delighted to give you the solace—if it is one -of my rather dull company. I take your invitation as a high compliment; though I wish, for your sake, that I were twenty-five years younger and had the use of my eyes."

"You will do very well as you are, thanks," returned Nigel, laughing, "and a great deal better than anybody else whom I could name. One thing is certain, it is only you who have preserved me from wrecking the whole future of the Rixmouth estate. I shudder at the thought of the blunders I should have committed already, but for you!"

This, at all events, was a form of compliment to which old Humphry was peculiarly sensible.

"

Oh, my dear fellow, you exaggerate!" he protested. "You have been good enough to listen to me, and perhaps, from knowing the place and the people so well as I do, I may have been able to render you some small services; but you should be finding your feet by this time. I am glad to think that you won't require my meddling much longer."

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