There was no languor in her now.  She had dressed in white, and now she took a blue silk cloak with a hood, and caught up the flower that had so miraculously survived last night’s wearing and pinned it at her breast.  Then making sure no servant was about, she slipped downstairs and out.  It was just eight, and the sun still glistened on the dove-cot.  She kept away from that lest the birds should come fluttering about her, and betray her by cooing.  When she had nearly reached the tow-path, she stopped affrighted.  Surely something had moved, something heavy, with a sound of broken branches.  Was it the memory of last night come on her again; or, indeed, someone there?  She walked back a few steps.  Foolish alarm!  In the meadow beyond a cow was brushing against the hedge.  And, stealing along the grass, out on to the tow-path, she went swiftly towards the poplar.

XIX

A hundred times in these days of her absence Lennan had been on the point of going down, against her orders, just to pass the house, just to feel himself within reach, to catch a glimpse of her, perhaps, from afar.  If his body haunted London, his spirit had passed down on to that river where he had drifted once already, reconnoitring.  A hundred times—­by day in fancy, and by night in dreams—­pulling himself along by the boughs, he stole down that dim backwater, till the dark yews and the white dove-cot came into view.

For he thought now only of fulfilment.  She was wasting cruelly away!  Why should he leave her where she was?  Leave her to profane herself and all womanhood in the arms of a man she hated?

And on that day of mid-June, when he received her telegram, it was as if he had been handed the key of Paradise.

Would she—­could she mean to come away with him that very night?  He would prepare for that at all events.  He had so often in mind faced this crisis in his affairs, that now it only meant translating into action what had been carefully thought out.  He packed, supplied himself liberally with money, and wrote a long letter to his guardian.  It would hurt the old man—­Gordy was over seventy now—­but that could not be helped.  He would not post it till he knew for certain.

After telling how it had all come about, he went on thus:  “I know that to many people, and perhaps to you, Gordy, it will seem very wrong, but it does not to me, and that is the simple truth.  Everybody has his own views on such things, I suppose; and as I would not—­on my honour, Gordy—­ever have held or wished to hold, or ever will hold in marriage or out of marriage, any woman who does not love me, so I do not think it is acting as I would resent others acting towards me, to take away from such unhappiness this lady for whom I would die at any minute.  I do not mean to say that pity has anything to do with it—­I thought so at first, but I know now that it is all swallowed up in the most mighty