“All right!  I’m game!”

Which brief sentence meant, for Lord Charlemont, that he was loyal to the death.  He was not romantic in the style of expressing himself,—­he would not have understood how to swear fealty on a drawn sword—­but when he said—­’I’m game,’-it came to the same thing.  Reversing his car, he sped away, whizzing up the road like a boomerang, back to Badsworth Hall.  Maryllia watched him till he was out of sight,—­then with a sigh of relief, she turned and look wistfully at the church.  Its beautiful architecture had the appearance of worn ivory in the mellow radiance of the late afternoon, and the sculptured figures of the Twelve Apostles in their delicately carved niches, six on either side of the portal, seemed almost life-like, as the rays of the warm and brilliant sunshine, tempered by a touch of approaching evening, struck them aslant as with a luminance from heaven.  She lifted the latch of the churchyard gate,—­and walking slowly with bent head between the rows of little hillocks where, under every soft green quilt of grass lay someone sleeping, she entered the sacred building.  It was quite empty.  There was a scent of myrtle and lilies in the air,—­it came from two clusters of blossoms which were set at either side of the gold cross on the altar.  Stepping softly, and with reverence, Maryllia went up to the Communion rails, and looked long and earnestly at the white alabaster sarcophagus which, in its unknown origin and antiquity, was the one unsolved mystery of St. Rest.  A vague sensation of awe stole upon her,—­and she sank involuntarily on her knees.

“If I could pray now,”—­she thought—­“What should I pray for?”

And then it seemed that something wild and appealing rose in her heart and clamoured for an utterance which her tongue refused to give,—­her bosom heaved,—­her lips trembled,—­and suddenly a rush of tears blinded her eyes.

“Oh, if I were only loved!” she murmured under her breath—­“If only someone could find me worth caring for!  I would endure any suffering, any loss, to win this one priceless gift,—­love!”

A little smothered sob broke from her lips.

“Father!  Mother!” she whispered, instinctively stretching out her hands—­“I am so lonely!—­so very, very lonely!”

Only silence answered her, and the dumb perfume of the altar flowers.  She rose,—­and stood a moment trying to control herself,—­a pretty little pitiful figure in her dainty, garden-party frock, a soft white chiffon hat tied on under her rounded chin with a knot of pale blue ribbon, and a tiny cobweb of a lace kerchief in her hand with which she dried her wet eyes.

“Oh dear!” she sighed—­“It’s no use crying!  It only shows what a weak little idiot I am!  I’m lonely, of course,—­I can’t expect anything else; I shall always be lonely—­Roxmouth and Aunt Emily will take care of that.  The lies they will tell about me will keep off every man but the one mean and slanderous fortune-hunter, to whom lies are second nature.  And as I won’t marry him, I shall be left to myself—­I shall be an old maid.  Though that doesn’t matter—­ old maids are often the happiest women.  Anyhow, I’d rather be an old maid than Duchess of Ormistoune.”