Inside the carriage, and moving away to the echo of the street people’s cheer, she tried to turn and look at Lord Walderhurst with an unalarmed, if faint, smile.

“Well,” he said, with the originality which marked him, “it is really over!”

“Yes,” Emily agreed with him.  “And I never can forget Lady Maria’s goodness.”

Walderhurst gazed at her with a dawning inquiry in his mind.  He himself did not know what the inquiry was.  But it was something a trifle stimulating.  It had something to do with the way in which she had carried herself throughout the whole thing.  Really few women could have done it as well.  The pale violet of her travelling costume which was touched with sable was becoming to her fine, straight figure.  And at the moment her eyes rested on his with the suggestion of trustful appeal.  Despite the inelasticity of his mind, he vaguely realised his bridegroom honours.

“I can begin now,” he said with stiff lightness, if such a paradox can be, “to address you as the man in Esmond addressed his wife.  I can call you ‘my lady.’”

“Oh!” she said, still trying to smile, but quivering.

“You look very nice,” he said.  “Upon my word you do.”

And kissed her trembling honest mouth almost as if he had been a man—­not quite—­but almost.

Chapter Nine

They began the new life at Palstrey Manor, which was ancient and most beautiful.  Nothing Walderhurst owned was as perfect an example of olden time beauty, and as wonderful for that reason.  Emily almost wept before the loveliness of it, though it would not have been possible for her to explain or particularise the grounds for her emotion.  She knew nothing whatever of the venerable wonders of the architecture.  To her the place looked like an immense, low-built, rambling fairy palace—­the palace of some sleeping beauty during whose hundred years of slumber rich dark-green creepers had climbed and overgrown its walls and towers, enfolding and festooning them with leaves and tendrils and actual branches.  The huge park held an enchanted forest of trees; the long avenue of giant limes, their writhen limbs arching and interlocking, their writhen roots deep in velvet moss, was an approach suited to a fairy story.

* * * * *

During her first month at Palstrey Emily went about still in her dream.  It became more a dream every day.  The old house was part of it, the endless rooms, the wonderful corridors, the gardens with their revelations of winding walks, labyrinths of evergreens, and grass paths leading into beautiful unexpected places, where one suddenly came upon deep, clear pools where water plants grew and slow carp had dreamed centuries away.  The gardens caused Emily to disbelieve in the existence of Mortimer Street, but the house at times caused her to disbelieve in herself.  The picture gallery especially had this effect upon