Certainly this day of elucidation was not a pleasant one.  Everybody appeared in a changed point of view, and was feeling its awkwardness.  Harry and Bluebell, hardly knowing if they had a right to remain there, wandering disconsolately about, like a modern Adam and Eve awaiting expulsion from Paradise.

Kate felt baffled and dangerous,—­angry at her cousin having slipped so smoothly through her fingers, and jealous of his wife.

Lord Bromley, though deeply incensed with Harry, was longing to keep Bluebell, whose every glance and gesture recalled his secretly lamented son.  Lady Calvert was on the point of departure with her daughter; and the facts having percolated through the household, all the maids got sick headaches from sympathetic excitement.

Dutton had had a very stormy interview with his cousin when he rushed after her from the arbour.  Kate was determined to betray them, and he vainly tried to induce her to be silent.  On one condition only would she promise secrecy—­that Bluebell should give immediate warning, and that he should never speak to her again.  But Harry only laughed, while Kate urged everything she could think of—­ruin to his prospects, his uncle’s anger, etc.

“It is no business of yours,” reiterated Dutton.  “If you say anything about it, you’ll soon see you have made a fool of yourself, and the little you do know is by prying and listening.”

But Kate broke from him and darted into the house, past Lady Geraldine, who was just coming out, and who noticed with surprise the disturbed appearance of the two cousins.  To Dutton she seemed a good angel sent to invalidate the spells of an evil one.  As the reader knows, she alone had been entrusted with the secret of his marriage, and he now briefly explained that Kate was bent upon betraying his meetings with Bluebell, and entreated her, if possible, by any stratagem, to detain her for awhile.

Geraldine, fully alive to the importance of the request, exclaimed with a gesture of impatience—­

“How provoking! when you were to have told your own story to-morrow!  Be quick, Mr. Dutton, don’t lose a moment, and I will undertake to keep Kate and Mrs. Barrington quiet till they can do no further mischief.”

A very grateful glance from Harry as he sprang away; and how he fared in the dreaded interview is already known to the reader.

CHAPTER XLI.

A LOCK OF HAIR.

For which they be that hold apart
The promise of the golden hours;
First love, first friendship, equal powers,
That many with the virgin heart. 
—­In Memoriam.

Another year had gone by since the denouement at Bromley Towers.  The war was over, peace proclaimed, and what remained of our armies had returned from the East.