He knew the omnibus had not been sent for for them, but he did not want Di to realize for whom it was required. Archie hurried on. Miss Crupps and Mr. Lumley passed at a little distance. "You are deceiving me," gasped Di. "You mean it kindly, but you are deceiving me. He is dead. Did not Archie say he was dead? It is no good keeping it from me." Lord Hemsworth tried to soothe her in vain. "The man on the bank shot twice," she went on incoherently. "I tried to get between, but it was no good; and I screamed, but you were all so long in coming. I never knew people so slow. You were too late, too late, too late!" Lord Hemsworth was experiencing that unbearable wrench at the heart which goes by the easy name of emotion. He was reading his death-warrant in every random word Di said. It appeared to him that he had always known that John loved Di; and yet until this evening he had never thought of it, and certainly never dreamed for a moment that she cared for him. He had not imagined that Di could care for any one. The ease with which any man can marry any woman nowadays, the readiness of women to give their affection to any one, irrespective of age, character, and antecedents, has awakened in men's minds a profound and too well grounded disbelief in women's love. The average woman of the present day is, as men are well aware, in love with marriage, and in order to attain to that state a preference for one person rather than another is quickly seen to be prejudicial; for though love conduces to happy marriages, love conduces also to the catastrophe of single life, and is but a blind leader of the blind at best. Lord Hemsworth loved Di, but that was different. The fact that she, being human, might be equally attached to himself or to some other man had never struck him. It struck him now, and for a few minutes he was speechless. It was only a very great compassion and tenderness that was able to wrestle with and vanquish the intolerable pain of the moment. "See, Di," he said gently, through his white lips. "Look at that great tear and hole through your muff. I saw it directly I picked it up. A bullet did that; do you understand?--a bullet that perhaps would have hit Tempest but for you. But you saved him from it. Perhaps he is better now, and afraid _you_ are hurt. There is the carriage coming to us; let us go on to meet it." And in truth the great Overleigh omnibus, with men at the horses' heads, was lurching across the uneven turf to meet them. "Where is John?" asked Di of Archie, peering at the empty carriage.