As they drove across the heather, Emily was trembling softly from head to foot.  She could have told no human being what she felt.  Only a woman who had lived as she had lived and who had been trained as she had been trained could have felt it.  The brilliance of the thing which had happened to her was so unheard of and so undeserved, she told herself.  It was so incredible that, even with the splendid gray mare’s high-held head before her and Lord Walderhurst by her side, she felt that she was only part of a dream.  Men had never said “things” to her, and a man was saying them—­the Marquis of Walderhurst was saying them.  They were not the kind of things every man says or said in every man’s way, but they so moved her soul that she quaked with joy.

“I am not a marrying man,” said his lordship, “but I must marry, and I like you better than any woman I have ever known.  I do not generally like women.  I am a selfish man, and I want an unselfish woman.  Most women are as selfish as I am myself.  I used to like you when I heard Maria speak of you.  I have watched you and thought of you ever since I came here.  You are necessary to every one, and you are so modest that you know nothing about it.  You are a handsome woman, and you are always thinking of other women’s good looks.”

Emily gave a soft little gasp.

“But Lady Agatha,” she said.  “I was sure it was Lady Agatha.”

“I don’t want a girl,” returned his lordship.  “A girl would bore me to death.  I am not going to dry-nurse a girl at the age of fifty-four.  I want a companion.”

“But I am so far from clever,” faltered Emily.

The marquis turned in his driving-seat to look at her.  It was really a very nice look he gave her.  It made Emily’s cheeks grow pink and her simple heart beat.

“You are the woman I want,” he said.  “You make me feel quite sentimental.”

When they reached Mallowe, Emily had upon her finger the ruby which Lady Maria had graphically described as being “as big as a trouser button.”  It was, indeed, so big that she could scarcely wear her glove over it.  She was still incredible, but she was blooming like a large rose.  Lord Walderhurst had said so many “things” to her that she seemed to behold a new heaven and a new earth.  She had been so swept off her feet that she had not really been allowed time to think, after that first gasp, of Lady Agatha.

When she reached her bedroom she almost returned to earth as she remembered it.  Neither of them had dreamed of this—­neither of them.  What could she say to Lady Agatha?  What would Lady Agatha say to her, though it had not been her fault?  She had not dreamed that such a thing could be possible.  How could she, oh, how could she?

She was standing in the middle of her room with clasped hands.  There was a knock upon the door, and Lady Agatha herself came to her.

What had occurred?  Something.  It was to be seen in the girl’s eyes, and in a certain delicate shyness in her manner.