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“What was she like? Wasn’t she very grateful?”

“I don’t know at all. I don’t suppose she enjoyed the situation any more than I did.”

He plucked a tuft of moss and tossed it from him, as if therewith dismissing the subject. And Priscilla felt a little hurt, though not for worlds would she have suffered him to see it.

It fell to him to break the silence a few seconds later, and he did so without a hint of difficulty.

“When am I going to see the crypt?”

Priscilla laughed a little.

“Are you writing a book about the place?”

He laughed back at her quite openly.

“Not at present. When I do, it will be a romance, with you for heroine.”

“Oh, no; not me!” she protested. “I am a mere nobody. Lady Priscilla ought to be your heroine.”

He raised his eyebrows. She had begun to associate that look of his with protest rather than surprise.

“I have yet to be introduced to Lady Priscilla,” he said. “And as she doesn’t like men, I almost think I shall forego the pleasure and keep out of her way.”

“Perhaps I have given you a wrong impression about her,” Priscilla said, speaking with a slight effort. “It is only the idle, foppish men about town she has no use for.”

“She is fastidious, apparently,” he returned, lying down abruptly at her feet.

“Don’t you like women to be fastidious?” Priscilla demanded boldly.

He lay quite motionless for several seconds, then turned in a leisurely fashion upon his side to survey her.

“You are fastidious?” he asked.

“Of course I am!” Priscilla’s words came rather breathlessly. “Don’t you think me so?”

Again he was silent for seconds. Then, in a baffling drawl, his answer came:

“If you will allow me to say so, I think you are just the sweetest woman I ever met.”

Priscilla met his eyes for a single instant, and looked away. She was burning and throbbing from head to foot. She could find naught to say in answer; no word wherewith to turn his deliberate sentence into a jest. Perhaps in her secret heart she did not desire to do so, for a voice within her, a voice long stifled, cried out that she had met her mate. And, since surrender was inevitable, why should she seek to delay it?

But Carfax said no more. Possibly he thought he had said too much. At least, after a long, quiet pause, he looked away from her; and the spell that bound her passed.

V

THE OPENING GATES

That evening Priscilla found a letter from her stepmother awaiting her–a briefly worded, urgent summons.

“Your cousin has not arrived, after all,” it said. “Your father and I are greatly disappointed. Would it not be as well for you to return to town? You can scarcely, I fear, afford to waste your time in this fashion. Young Lord Harfield was asking for you most solicitously only yesterday. Such a charming man, I have always thought!”

“That–chicken!” said Priscilla, and tossed her letter aside.

Later, she went up to the top of the Abbey, and out on to a part of the roof that had been battlemented, to dream her dream again under the stars and to view her paradise yet more closely from before the opening gates.

It was very late when she returned lightfooted to Froggy’s sitting-room, and, kneeling by her friend’s side, interposed her dark head between the kind, bulging eyes and the open Bible that lay upon the table.

“Froggy,” she whispered softly, “I’m so happy, dear–so happy!”

And so kneeling, she told Froggy in short, halting sentences of the sudden splendour that had glorified her life.

Froggy was greatly astonished, and even startled. She was also anxious, and showed it. But Priscilla hastened to smooth this away.

“Yes, I know it’s sudden. But sometimes, you know, love is like that. Don’t be anxious, Froggy. I am much more cautious–but what a ridiculous word!–than you think. He doesn’t know who I am yet. I pretended to him that I was a relation of yours. And he isn’t to know at present. You will keep that in mind, won’t you? And in a day or two I shall bring him in here to tea, and you will be able to judge of him for yourself. No, dear, no; of course he hasn’t spoken. It is much too soon. You forget that though I have known him so long, he has only known me for two days. Oh, Froggy, isn’t it wonderful to think of–that he should have come at last like this? It is almost as if–as if my love had drawn him.”