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Colonel Hayward took off his hat as he came up. This was to him an everyday action, but to her an unusual grace, a homage which only lately had ever been given to her, and which she esteemed disproportionately as a sign of special chivalry. It brought the colour to her cheeks, which ebbed again the moment after in the fluctuations of her anxiety. The old Colonel looked very anxious too; his face was agitated, and paler than usual. When he came up to her he stopped. ‘I don’t think,’ he said, ‘that we were ever introduced to each other; but still—— You have been taking a walk this fine morning?’

‘The holidays have just begun, sir,’ said Joyce respectfully. ‘This is the first day: and though I am very fond of my work, freedom is sweet at first.’

‘Only at first?’

‘It is always sweet,’ she said, with a smile; ‘but never so delicious as the first day.’

Their hearts were not in this light talk, and here it came to an end. He had turned with her, and they were walking along side by side. Great anxiety—tremulous and breathless suspense—were in the minds of both on the same subject—and yet they regarded it in aspects so different! The soft transparent shadow of the hedge kept them from all the flicker of light and movement outside, giving a sort of recueillement, a calm of gravity and stillness, to the two figures. Had they been in a picture, there could have been no better title for it than ‘The Telling of the Secret.’ But yet there was no secret told. He was absorbed in his own thoughts, and unconscious of the wistful looks which she gave him timidly from time to time. At last he turned upon her, and asked the strangest question, with a tremor and quiver in all his big frame.