“How capricious she is!” remarked Lady Verner to the Countess of Elmsley, who was sitting next her.  “If I had pressed her, she would probably have said no—­as she has done so many times.”

He took his place at the head of the room, Decima by his side in her white silk robes.  Decima, with her wondrous beauty, and the hectic on her cheeks again.  Many an envious pair of eyes was cast to her.  “That dreadful old maid, Decima Verner!” was amongst the compliments launched at her. “She to usurp him!  How had my Lady Verner contrived to manoeuvre for it?”

But Sir Edmund did not appear dissatisfied with his partner, if the room was.  He paid a vast deal more attention to her than he did to the dance; the latter he put out more than once, his head and eyes being bent, whispering to Decima.  Before the dance was over, the hectic on her cheeks had grown deeper.

“Are you afraid of the night air?” he asked, leading her through the conservatory to the door at its other end.

“No.  It never hurts me.”

He proceeded along the gravel path round to the other side of the house; there he opened the glass doors of a room and entered.  It led into another, bright with fire.

“It is my own sitting-room,” he observed.  “Nobody will intrude upon us here.”

Taking up the poker, he stirred the fire into a blaze.  Then he put it down and turned to her, as she stood on the hearth-rug.

“Decima!”

It was only a simple name; but Sir Edmund’s whole frame was quivering with emotion as he spoke it.  He clasped her to him with a strangely fond gesture, and bent his face on hers.

“I left my farewell on your lips when I quitted you, Decima.  I must take my welcome from them now.”

She burst into tears as she clung to him.  “Sir Rufus sent for me when he was dying,” she whispered.  “Edmund, he said he was sorry to have opposed you; he said he would not if the time could come over again.”

“I know it,” he answered.  “I have his full consent; nay, his blessing.  They are but a few words, but they were the last he ever wrote.  You shall see them, Decima:  he calls you my future wife, Lady Hautley.  Oh, my darling! what a long, cruel separation it has been!”

Ay! far more long, more cruel for Decima than for him.  She was feeling it bitterly now, as the tears poured down her face.  Sir Edmund placed her in a chair.  He hung over her scarcely less agitated than she was, soothing her with all the fondness of his true heart, with the sweet words she had once known so well.  He turned to the door when she grew calmer.

“I am going to bring Lady Verner.  It is time she knew it.”

Not through the garden this time, but through the open passages of the house, lined with servants, went Sir Edmund.  Lady Verner was in the seat where they left her.  He made his way to her, and held his arm out that she might take it.