“Did you walk all the way?”

The note in Connie’s voice was softly reproachful.

“Why, it’s only three miles!” said Radowitz, as though defending himself, but he spoke with an accent of depression.  And Connie remembered how, in the early days of his recovery from his injury, he had spent hours rambling over the moors by himself, or with Sorell.  Her heart yearned to him.  She would have liked to take his poor hands in hers, and talk to him tenderly like a sister.  But there was that other dark face, and those other eyes opposite—­watching.  And to them too, her young sympathy went out—­how differently!—­how passionately!  A kind of rending and widening process seemed to be going on within her own nature.  Veils were falling between her and life; and feelings, deeper and stronger than any she had ever known, were fast developing the woman in the girl.  How to heal Radowitz!—­how to comfort Falloden!  Her mind ached under the feelings that filled it—­feelings wholly disinterested and pure.

“You really are taking the Boar’s Hill cottage?” she asked, addressing Radowitz.

“I think so.  It is nearly settled.  But I am trying to find some companion.  Sorell can only come occasionally.”

As he spoke, a wild idea flashed into Falloden’s brain.  It seemed to have entered without—­or against—­his will; as though suggested by some imperious agency outside himself.  His intelligence laughed at it.  Something else in him entertained it—­breathlessly.

Radowitz stooped down to try and tempt Lady Marcia’s dachshund with a piece of cake.

“I must anyhow have a dog,” he said, as the pampered Max accepted the cake, and laid his head gratefully on the donor’s knee; “they’re always company.”

He looked wistfully into the dog’s large, friendly eyes.

Connie rose.

“Please don’t move!” she said, flushing.  “I shall be back directly.  But I must put up a letter.  I hear the postman!” She ran over the grass, leaving the two men in acute discomfort.  Falloden thought again, with rising excitement:  “She planned it!  She wants me to do something—­to take some step—­but what?”

An awkward pause followed.  Radowitz was still playing with the dog, caressing its beautiful head with his uninjured hand, and talking to it in a half whisper.  As Constance departed, a bright and feverish red had rushed into his cheeks; but it had only made his aspect more ghostly, more unreal.

Again the absurd idea emerged in Falloden’s consciousness; and this time it seemed to find its own expression, and to be merely making use of his voice, which he heard as though it were some one else’s.

He bent over towards Radowitz.

“Would you care to share the cottage with me?” he said abruptly.  “I want to find a place to read in—­out of Oxford.”

Radowitz looked up, amazed—­speechless!  Falloden’s eyes met Otto’s steadily.  The boy turned away.  Suddenly he covered his face with his free hand.