“John,” said Alison with a questioning smile, when they were alone before the fire, “I believe he went out on purpose,—­don’t you?—­just that we might be here alone.”

“He knew we were coming?”

“I wrote him.”

“I think he might be convicted on the evidence,” Hodder agreed.  “But—?” His question remained unasked.

Alison went up to him.  He had watched her, absorbed and fascinated, as with her round arms gracefully lifted in front of the old mirror she had taken off her hat and veil; smoothing, by a few deft touches, the dark crown of her hair.  The unwonted intimacy of the moment, invoking as it did an endless reflection of other similar moments in their future life together, was in its effect overwhelming, bringing with it at last a conviction not to be denied.  Her colour rose as she faced him, her lashes fell.

“Did you seriously think, dear, that we could have deceived Mr. Bentley?  Then you are not as clever as I thought you.  As soon as it happened I sent him a note? that very night.  For I felt that he ought to be told first of all.”

“And as usual,” Hodder answered, “you were right.”

Supper was but a continuation of that delicious sense of intimacy.  And Sam, beaming in his starched shirt and swallow-tail, had an air of presiding over a banquet of state.  And for that matter, none had ever gone away hungry from this table, either for meat or love.  It was, indeed, a consecrated meal,—­consecrated for being just there.  Such was the tact which the old darky had acquired from his master that he left the dishes on the shining mahogany board, and bowed himself out.

“When you wants me, Miss Alison, des ring de bell.”

She was seated upright yet charmingly graceful, behind the old English coffee service which had been Mr. Bentley’s mother’s.  And it was she who, by her wonderful self-possession, by the reassuring smile she gave him as she handed him his cup, endowed it all with reality.

“It’s strange,” she said, “but it seems as though I had been doing it all my life, instead of just beginning.”

“And you do it as though you had,” he declared.

“Which is a proof,” she replied, “of the superior adaptability of women.”

He did not deny it.  He would not then, in truth, have disputed her wildest statement. . .  But presently, after they had gone back into the library and were seated side by side before the coals, they spoke again of serious things, marvelling once more at a happiness which could be tinged and yet unmarred by vicarious sorrow.  Theirs was the soberer, profounder happiness of gratitude and wonder, too wise to exult, but which of itself is exalted; the happiness which praises, and passes understanding.

“There are many things I want to say to you, John,” she told him, once, “and they trouble me a little.  It is only because I am so utterly devoted to you that I wish you to know me as I am.  I have always had queer views, and although much has happened to change me since I have known and loved you, I am not quite sure how much those views have changed.  Love,” she added, “plays such havoc with one’s opinions.”