There Lingard had linked his arm through hers, and the movement had given her a delicious thrill of joy, deepening in her that protective instinct which makes every woman long for the man she loves to cling to her. As they had paced up and down, so happily alone in the peopled solitude London offers to her lovers, Jane's tender heart could not forget what lay so near, and she had compared her blest lot with that meted out to the suffering and the forlorn, who lie in their serried ranks in the wards she so often visited. How gladly now she would have changed places with the one among them who was nearest to death. They were close to the Rectory gate, and Jane suddenly remembered that Lingard had promised to go in and see Mrs. Kaye this morning. She had forced herself to ask him to do so, and she remembered now that he had assented to her wish with almost painful eagerness. Perhaps he thought she meant him to go there with her. That would explain his coming to the Farm so early. "Mr. Maule asked me to come to you," he said at last, breaking the long oppressive silence. "He thought--God knows why he thought it!--that a certain terrible thing which has happened--which happened last night--would reach you best from me." "Something which happened last night?" Jane repeated in a low voice. "I know it already. Athena wrote to me." She turned and faced him steadily. "Don't look like that, Hew. I--I can't bear it. I know you couldn't help what's happened. I know you never loved me in the way a man ought to love a woman whom he is going to marry." "I did," he said hoarsely. "I swear to God I did!" She shook her head. "We both made a mistake," she answered steadily--"and it is fortunate that we discovered it in time. After all, engagements are often broken off, and we were engaged such a little--little while. I am glad Mr. Maule has made up his mind to do what is right." She flushed for the first time a deep red. The discussion was hateful to her. "You are going to the Rectory to see Mrs. Kaye? I won't go in with you, but I will wait here till you come out; and then we will walk together to Rede Place. I am going away to-day, back to London, and I can't go away without saying good-bye to them. I promised Athena I would come for a few moments----" The emotion she was restraining, the tears she kept from falling, stained her face with faint patches of red, and thickened her eyelids. The measure of beauty which was hers, that beauty which owed so much to her ever-varying expression, was wholly obscured to-day. Lingard felt intolerably moved. It was horrible to him to feel that he had bartered the right, the right he had owned for so short a time and had yielded so lightly, of taking Jane into his arms, and yet he felt he had never loved her as he loved her now, defenceless, before him. He could not wound and shock her by telling her of the terrible thing which had happened. Mr. Maule had asked too much of him.