“Walk back to the village,” Margery answered, with a sigh and a wistful glance in the direction of the castle. So much sorrow had come to her since that happy day in Weald Wood that she seemed, indeed, faint and weary. She longed to see Stuart, to send him a few words; but her pride, her modesty, forbade it, and not until this morning could she summon up courage to walk to the lodge gates and inquire about him. She never doubted his constancy, nor did she look for any message from him. She knew of his suffering, and all her thought was for him. She turned away now, with a graceful inclination to Sir Douglas, and prepared to retrace her steps. “You cannot walk yet--you are not rested,” he said, sharply. “Sit down a while. This heat is enough to kill you.” Margery shook her head. “Thank you; I must go. I only came to inquire after--after Mr. Stuart.” “He is in good hands,” Sir Douglas remarked, in his dry, cynical way. “I set his arm; but his heart requires another doctor, and his cousin has succeeded there. Ah, the village will see a wedding before long, child, unless I have lost my wits!” He was turning away when he suddenly approached her once more. “I must see you again,” he said, in a strange, husky voice. “You have brought back a gleam of the past that was buried, touched the spring of a secret that has never seen life. There is a strange sense of hope within my heart--hope that I thought dead, never to be revived. Child, whoever you may be, remember that in the future, while I live, I will be a friend to you, for you bear an angel’s face.” He turned and walked away rapidly; but Margery had neither heard nor understood what he meant. She was repeating over and over again the words he had uttered first; her heart grasped too clearly and terribly the meaning--a wedding in the village, a wedding from the castle! Stuart, her Stuart, the being who held her very life, marry another--that fair, lovely woman who had laughed her to scorn! The sunshine grew blood-red before her eyes, for one instant she reeled, and then grasped the doorpost for support. Then gradually she awoke to the fullness of her pain and humiliation. Pride was swelling in her heart; she seemed in that instant changed from a girl of glowing, living hopes to a woman who had tasted the bitterness of all earthly grief. She bent her head and walked steadily down the lane, heedless of the sun, heedless of the rough stones, heedless even of madame’s presence, as she dashed past in her carriage. She was oblivious of everything save her pain and trouble, and the memory of her wasted love. CHAPTER X. “Friendship is constant in all other things, Save in the office and affairs of love; Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues. Let ev’ry eye negotiate for itself, And trust no agent.”