“I believe that she is,” I admitted.

“Then I do not understand her desire to see you,” Lord Chelsford said.  “The Duke of Rowchester is my friend and relative, Ducaine, and I do not see how I can permit this interview.”

“And I,” said a quiet thrilling voice behind his back, “do not know how you are going to prevent it.”

She closed the door behind her.  She was so frail and so delicately beautiful in her white gown, with the ropes of pearls around her neck, the simply parted hair, and her dark eyes were so plaintive and yet so tender, that the angry exclamation died away on Lord Cheisford’s lips.

“Angela,” he said, “Mr. Ducaine is here.  You can speak with him if you will, but it must be in my presence.  You must not think that I do not trust you—­both of you.  But I owe this condition to your father.”

She came over to me very timidly.  She seemed to me so beautiful, so exquisitely childish, that I touched the fingers of the hand she gave me with a feeling of positive reverence.

“You have come to wish me God-speed,” I murmured.  “I shall never forget it.”

“You are really going, then?”

“I am going for a little time out of your life, Lady Angela,” I answered.  “It is necessary:  Lord Chelsford knows that.  But I am not going in disgrace.  I am very thankful to be able to tell you that.”

“It was not necessary to tell me,” she answered.  “Am I not here?”

I bent low over her hand, which rested still in mine.

“Mine is not a purposeless exile—­nor altogether an unhappy one—­now,” I said.  “I have work to do, Lady Angela, and I am going to it with a good heart.  When we meet again I hope that it may be differently.  Your coming—­the memory of it will stand often between me and loneliness.  It will sweeten the very bitterest of my days.”

“You are really going—­to China?” she murmured.

I glanced towards Lord Chelsford.  His back was turned to us.  If he understood the meaning of my pause he made no sign.

“I may not tell you where I am going or why,” I answered.  “But I will tell you this, Lady Angela.  I shall come back, and as you have come to see me to-night, so shall I come to you before long.  If you will trust me I will prove myself worthy of it.”

She did not answer me with any word at all, but with a sudden little forward movement of both her hands, and I saw that her eyes were swimming in tears.  Yet they shone into mine like stars, and I saw heaven there.

“I am sorry,” Lord Chelsford said, gravely interposing, “but Lady Chelsford will be waiting for you, Angela.  And I think that I must ask you to remember that I cannot sanction, or appear by my silence to sanction, anything of this sort.”

So he led her away, but what did I care?  My heart was beating with the rapture of her backward glance.  I cared neither for Ray nor the Duke nor any living person.  For with me it was the one supreme moment of a man’s lifetime, come too at the very moment of my despair.  I was no longer at the bottom of the pit.  The wonderful gates stood open.