"Was it a dream?" she was continually asking herself; but the answer to this perpetually eluded her. All the events of the previous evening had resolved themselves into a sort of painful vision. The dark, sullen river; her restless anguish; those confused moments when, giddy and sick, she had sat on the bench with Mr. Chaytor beside her; the walk through the lighted streets; and then the warmth and comfort of that friendly refuge. It was not until late in the afternoon, when the wintry dusk had closed in, and the Pansy Room was bright with firelight, that the power of consecutive thought and memory seemed to return to Waveney, when some sudden remembrance made her bury her face in the pillow. What were those words that, in spite of her weakness, seemed stamped on her heart and brain? "Trouble? When there is nothing on earth that I would not do for you, my darling!" No, it was no dream. She had actually heard them. He had really said them. Would she ever forget his voice, or the smile that had seemed to steal into her weary heart like a benediction? Then, for a few blissful moments, Mollie was forgotten in the overwhelming consciousness that the man she most admired and revered, who seemed so far above her in wisdom and intellect, should stoop from his great height to care for her. CHAPTER XXXIII. A QUIXOTIC RESOLUTION. "Thine were the weak, slight hands That might have taken this strong soul, and bent Its stubborn substance to thy soft intent." WATSON. For the first time in his life Thorold Chaytor's conscience felt ill at ease; and, though his nature was by no means introspective or over-scrupulous, he tormented himself and suffered keen twinges of remorse, for what he called his unpardonable want of self-control. Thorold's sense of honour was exceptionally high; in spite of his cold, reserved manner, he was extremely sensitive; the thought that he had been over-mastered and carried away by passion, even though it had been momentary, humiliated and shocked him. In some of his ideas Thorold was somewhat behind his generation, and different from other men. He held old-fashioned and somewhat obsolete views on the subject of love, and his reverence for women savoured of the old days of chivalry. In his hard-working life he had been brought little into contact with them. He had no time for society. An evening at the Red House with his old friends, Althea and Doreen, was the only relaxation he had allowed himself. But, in spite of his self-repression, Thorold Chaytor was intensely human, and, like other men, he yearned for the joys of wife and child.