“That’s beautiful of you, darling,” he replied gently.  “But it’s a dangerous doctrine.  And I know that, really, you’re far too tender-hearted to sacrifice a fly.”

Elisabeth regarded him oddly.

“You don’t know me, Geoffrey,” she said very slowly.  “No man knows a woman, really—­not all her thoughts.”  And had Major Durward, honest fellow, realized the volcanic force of passion hidden behind the tense inscrutability of his wife’s lovely face, he would have been utterly confounded.  We do not plumb the deepest depths even of those who are closest to us.

Civilisation had indeed forced the turgid river to run within the narrow channels hewn by established custom, but, released from the bondage of convention, the soul of Elisabeth Durward was that of sheer primitive woman, and the pivot of all her actions her love for her mate and for the man-child she had borne him.

Once, years ago, she had sacrificed justice, and honour, and a man’s faith in womanhood on that same pitiless altar of love.  But the story of that sacrifice was known only to herself and one other—­and that other was not Durward.

CHAPTER XXII

LOVE’S SACRAMENT

A full week had elapsed since the night of that eventful journey in pursuit of Molly, and from the moment when Garth had given Sara into the safe keeping of Jane Crab till the moment when he came upon her by the pergola at Rose Cottage, perched on the top of a ladder, engaged in tying back the exuberance of a Crimson Rambler, they had not met.

And now, as he halted at the foot of the ladder, Sara was conscious that her spirits had suddenly bounded up to impossible heights at the sight of the lean, dark face upturned to her.

“The Lavender Lady and Miles are pottering about in the greenhouse,” she announced explanatorily, waving her hand in the direction of a distant glimmer of glass beyond the high box hedge which flanked the rose-garden.

“Are they?” Trent, thus arrested in the progress of his search for his host and hostess, seemed entirely indifferent as to whether it were ever completed or not.  He leaned against one of the rose-wreathed pillars of the pergola and gazed negligently in the direction Sara indicated.

“How is Miss Molly?” he asked.

Sara twinkled.

“She is just beginning to discard sackcloth and ashes for something more becoming,” she informed him gravely.

“That’s good.  Are you—­are you all right after your tumble?  I’m making these kind inquiries because, since it was my car out of which you elected to fall, I feel a sense of responsibility.”

Sara descended from the ladder before she replied.  Then she remarked composedly—­

“It has taken precisely seven days, apparently, for that sense of responsibility to develop.”

“On the contrary, for seven days my thirst for knowledge has been only restrained by the pointings of conscience.”