The house stood on the side of some rising ground in the midst of the green park.  Cattle were grazing dreamily in the grass, which grew rich and long about a string of ponds, and she could see Owen walking under the colonnade.  As the carriage came round the gravel space, his eyes sought her in the brougham, and she knew the wild and perplexed look on his face.

“No, don’t let’s go into the house unless you’re tired,” he said, and they walked down the drive under the branches, making, they knew not why, for the open park.  “This is terrible, isn’t it?  And this beautiful summer’s day too, not a cloud in the sky, not a wind in all the air.  How peaceful the cattle are in the meadow, and the swans in the pond.  But we are unhappy.  Why is this?  You say that it is the will of God.  That is no answer.  But you think it is?”

Fearing to irritate him, she did not speak, but he would not be put off, and she said—­

“Do not let us argue, Owen, dear.  Tell me about it.  It was quite unexpected?”

“She had been in ill-health, as you know, for some time.  Let us go this way.”

He led her through the shrubbery and through the wicket into the meadows which lay under the terrace, and, thinking of the dead woman, she wondered at the strange, somnolent life of the cattle in the meadows and the swans on the pond.  The willows, as if exhausted by the heat, seemed to bend under the stream, and their eyes followed the lines of the woods and looked into the burning blue of the sky, striving to read the secret there.  A rim of moist earth under their feet, and above their heads the infinite blue!  The stillness of the summer was in every blade of grass, in every leaf, and the pond reflected the sky and willows in hard, immovable reflections.  An occasional ripple of the water-fowl in the reeds impressed upon them the mystery of Nature’s indifference to human suffering.

“In that house behind that colonnade she lies dead.  Good God! isn’t it awful!  We shall never see her.  But you think we shall?”

“Owen, dear, let as avoid all discussion.  She was a good woman.  She was very good to me.”

“I haven’t told you that it was by her wish that I sent for you.  She wanted to ask you to promise to marry me....  I told her that I had asked you, and that in a way we were engaged.  I could not say more.  You seemed unsettled, you seemed to wish to get out of your promise—­is not that so?”

Evelyn thought of the scene by Lady Asher’s bedside that an accident had saved her from.  Marriage was more than ever impossible.  What should she have said if Lady Asher had not died before she arrived?  The dying woman’s eyes, the dying woman’s voice!  Good heavens! what would she have said?  But she had considered nothing.  After glancing at the telegram, she had told Merat to pack a few clothes, and had rushed away.  She pondered the various excuses she might have sent.  She might have said she was not in when the telegram