He could not clasp her to his breast before a flyman; but he seized both her hands, gripped them convulsively, and then led her towards the house, leaving Masters’s man to deal as he pleased with portmanteaux and hat-box, gun-case and umbrella-case, despatch-box, and other chattels; to leave them out in the lane to the dews and the night-birds, if he so listed. Martin Disney had no consciousness of anything in this world except the woman by his side. “My darling! my darling!” he ejaculated, in a choked voice, “how I have longed for this hour, with a longing that has been almost madness!” And then he saw for the first time that her face was as white as her gown. Was it the twilight that made her look so pale? Could he wonder if the emotion of this supreme moment blanched that young cheek, when he, soldier and wayfarer upon the world’s roughest roads, felt like a child, striving to hold back his tears? Lamps were burning in dining-room and drawing-room. He saw the table laid for dinner through the open door as he and Isola passed by; but the idea of eating and drinking seemed very far off just now. They went into the drawing-room together, where a solitary lamp was shining upon a table crowded with flowers, and where the scents of the garden came in through the open window. Here he satisfied the longing of his hungry heart, and took that fragile form in his arms, and kissed the pale cold lips. She lay upon his breast unresistingly; helpless, unresponsive, like a dead thing. “Isola, have you forgotten that you once loved me?” “Forgotten! No, no, no! There is no one in the world so good and true as you are. I love you with all my heart and soul.” Her face was hidden on his breast, but she lifted up her arms and clasped them round his neck. He seated himself in his accustomed chair--it was standing where it had always stood before he went away--and took her upon his knee, as if she had been a child. Then a great storm of sobs suddenly burst from throat and bosom, a flood of tears streamed upon his breast, and he felt her arms trembling as they clasped his neck. “My own dear love,” he murmured gently, “one would almost think you were sorry I have came back.” She could not answer him at first for her sobs, but she shook her head, and at last the words, “No, no, no,” came from her lips; and he kissed and calmed her with almost fatherly gentleness. And then they went into the dining-room, where the soup-tureen was waiting for them on the sideboard, with a neat little parlour-maid--not Susan, but another--ready to minister to them.