"Then he went away, and the brightness of the sun, the sky, the flowers, went with him. Yet I was strangely happy, with a new, strange, shy happiness. When other people, whom I had neither liked nor cared for, talked to me, I found that I had a fresh stock of patience--that I had such a fountain of happiness in my own heart I had abundance to shower upon others. The whole world changed to me from that day. I lived only in the hope of seeing Captain Studleigh. I counted the hours when I was away from him. Unfortunately for me, I found an aider and abettor in Lady Agnes Delapain. My mother did not even know that she was acquainted with him, and I--alas!--never told her. "Lady Agnes had a beautiful villa at Twickenham, and it was no unusual thing for me to spend two or three days with her. It was cruel to betray my mother's trust; there is no excuse for it, nor was there any for my friend. We never made any positive appointment. I never told him when I was going to Twickenham, yet he always seemed to know by instinct. Lord Delapain held some important office under the government, so that he was seldom at home. We three, Lady Delapain, Captain Studleigh, and myself, spent whole days together, sometimes in the grounds that surrounded her home, or on the river which ran close by. "The end of it was--see, I offer no excuse--that we both believed it impossible to live any longer without each other. Oh! folly and blindness and madness of love! I, who had never disobeyed my parents, who had always been a docile, obedient child, whose highest ambition had been to please them. I suffered him, my lover, to talk to me about a private marriage! He said that if we were once married, my parents would be very angry for a short time, that was certain: but when they saw there was no help for it, they would forgive us and all would be well again. I asked, timidly enough, for I dreaded to displease him, if it would not be better for him to try to win my parents' consent. "'I will try, if you like,' he said. 'I will do anything to please you: but I am quite sure it is useless. The moment they hear that I care for you they will take you away, and I shall see you no more.' "'Do you really think so, Ulric?' I asked, sadly. "'I am quite certain of it: still it shall be as you wish. I cannot live without you, Estelle. You are the whole world to me; and you love me, unless the story told by those sweet eyes is untrue.' "Lady Agnes knew nothing of these longing entreaties of his for a secret marriage. If I had told her I might have been saved. She, with all her imprudence, would never have permitted that. I dared not tell her, lest she should disapprove.