She opened her paper languidly; and almost the first words she read, under the heading of Election News, were these: 

’Apropos of the outrage on Mr. Courtier, we are requested to state that the lady who accompanied Lord Miltoun to the rescue of that gentleman was Mrs. Lees Noel, wife of the Rev. Stephen Lees Noel, vicar of Clathampton, Warwickshire.’

This dubious little daub of whitewash only brought a rather sad smile to her lips.  She left her tea, and went out into the air.  There at the gate was Miltoun coming in.  Her heart leaped.  But she went forward quietly, and greeted him with cast-down eyes, as if nothing were out of the ordinary.

CHAPTER XV

Exaltation had not left Miltoun.  His sallow face was flushed, his eyes glowed with a sort of beauty; and Audrey Noel who, better than most women, could read what was passing behind a face, saw those eyes with the delight of a moth fluttering towards a lamp.  But in a very unemotional voice she said: 

“So you have come to breakfast.  How nice of you!”

It was not in Miltoun to observe the formalities of attack.  Had he been going to fight a duel there would have been no preliminary, just a look, a bow, and the swords crossed.  So in this first engagement of his with the soul of a woman!

He neither sat down nor suffered her to sit, but stood looking intently into her face, and said: 

“I love you.”

Now that it had come, with this disconcerting swiftness, she was strangely calm, and unashamed.  The elation of knowing for sure that she was loved was like a wand waving away all tremors, stilling them to sweetness.  Since nothing could take away that knowledge, it seemed that she could never again be utterly unhappy.  Then, too, in her nature, so deeply, unreasoningly incapable of perceiving the importance of any principle but love, there was a secret feeling of assurance, of triumph.  He did love her!  And she, him!  Well!  And suddenly panic-stricken, lest he should take back those words, she put her hand up to his breast, and said: 

“And I love you.”

The feel of his arms round her, the strength and passion of that moment, were so terribly sweet, that she died to thought, just looking up at him, with lips parted and eyes darker with the depth of her love than he had ever dreamed that eyes could be.  The madness of his own feeling kept him silent.  And they stood there, so merged in one another that they knew and cared nothing for any other mortal thing.  It was very still in the room; the roses and carnations in the lustre bowl, seeming to know that their mistress was caught up into heaven, had let their perfume steal forth and occupy every cranny of the abandoned air; a hovering bee, too, circled round the lovers’ heads, scenting, it seemed, the honey in their hearts.