'Ah!' said Maud, 'if one could only go through life in that way--but it is so horribly unattainable. Everything is too difficult, and one is so shamefully weak. I could never be calm or noble in a trouble, like Felicia.' 'Wait till the troubles come,' said her companion kindly; 'you will find how one rises to an emergency. Felicia would not be what she is but for the trials she has borne. But see there is the guard, and here, alas! our pleasant journey together ends. I must travel on alone.' A few hundred yards below stood Sutton's first relay of horses, and here they were to part. A trooper was waiting to escort Maud on her homeward journey till she rejoined Felicia and the children. 'This,' Sutton said, 'has been a charming ride, though something of a sad one. I shall like to remember it. See, you shall give me that sweet rose you wear, and that shall be my badge in all tournaments to come. In return I will give you something to keep for me. This locket, you know, holds my mother's hair. I never part with it; but I have often thought it a foolish risk to take it on such wild expeditions as this. This time you shall take care of it for me, if you will. Sutton gave her the locket with the grave, pathetic air which, to Maud's eye, threw a sort of romance over his least important actions. He took her hand and held it in his own, and it seemed as though some sacred pledge were at the moment, with no spoken words, given and received. Maud never afterwards forgot that little scene--the kind, gentle eyes, the sorrowful furrowed brow, the tender solemn voice; in front the wide mysterious plains, stretching far below, all the horizon still aglow with the expiring glory of the sunset; behind her a cold blue darkening world--the gathering vapours, no longer irradiated, settling in solid masses on the solemn mountain-tops. As she came to a bend in the path she turned to wish her companion a last farewell, for she knew that he was watching her departure. Then she rode homewards through the gloom, moved, agitated, frightened, yet on the whole happier--with a deeper kind of happiness than she had ever known before. CHAPTER XXII. LOVE IS BEGUN. Love is begun--thus much is come to pass; The rest is easy.