"A good that you may still grant me," he said. "We may part, if you wish it, Leone. Leone, let us have one happy day before the time comes. Leone, you see how fair the summer is, I want you to spend one day with me on the river. The chestnuts are all in flower--the whole world is full of beauty, and song, and fragrance; the great boughs are dipping into the stream, and the water-lilies lie on the river's breast. My dear love and lost love, come with me for one day. We may be parted all the rest of our lives, come with me for one day." Her face brightened with the thought. Surely for one day they might be happy; long years would have to pass, and they would never meet. Oh, for one day, away on the river, in the world of clear waters, green boughs and violet banks--one day away from the world which had trammeled them and fettered them. "You tempt me," she said, slowly. "A day with you on the river. Ah, for such a pleasure as that I would give twenty years of my life." He did not answer her, because he dared not. He waited until his heart was calm and at rest again, then he said: "Let us go to-morrow, Leone, no one knows what twenty-four hours may bring forth. Let us go to-morrow, Leone. Rise early. How often we have gone out together while the dew lay upon the flowers and grass. Shall it be so?" The angel of prudence faded from her presence as she answered, "Yes." Knowing how she loved him, hearing the old love story in his voice, reading it in his face, she would have done better had she died there in the splendor of her beauty and the pain of her love than have said, "Yes." So it was arranged. "It will be a beautiful day," said Lord Chandos. "I am a capital rower, Leone, as you will remember. I will take you as far as Medmersham Abbey: we will land there and spend an hour in the ruins; but you will have to rise early and drive down to the river side. You will not mind that." "I shall mind nothing that brings me to you," she said, with a vivid blush, and so it was settled. They forgot the dictates of honor; he forgot his duty to his wife at home, and she forgot prudence and justice. The morning dawned. She had eagerly watched for it through the long hours of the night; it wakes her with the song of the birds and the shine of the sun; it wakes her with a mingled sense of pain and happiness, of pleasure and regret. She was to spend a whole day with him, but the background to that happiness was that he was leaving a wife at home who had all claims to his time and attention. "One happy day before I die," she said to herself. But will it be happy? The sun will shine brightly, yet there will be a background; yet it shall be happy because it will be with him. It was yet early in the morning when she drove to the appointed place at the river side. The sun shone in the skies, the birds sang in the trees, the beautiful river flashed and glowed in the light, the waters seemed to dance and the green leaves to thrill.