He did not understand the full drift of those words, as he might perhaps have done had he been calmer—did not realise as at another moment he might have done their deep significance. He was desperately, passionately in love, carried away inwardly, if not outwardly, by the tumult of his feelings. He did not realise—it was hardly likely that he should—that to secure her father’s happiness and the future well-being and happiness of her brother Monica had promised to be his wife. She respected him, she liked him, she was resolved to make him a true and faithful wife; and she knew so little of the true nature of wedded love that it never occurred to her to think of the injury she might be doing to him in giving the hand without the heart. She had been moved and disquieted by Arthur’s words of a few days back. Her father’s appeal to her that day had touched her to the quick. What better could she do with her life than secure with it the happiness of those she loved? How better could she keep her vow towards Arthur than by making the promise asked of her? Monica thought first of others in this matter, it is true, and yet there was a strange throb akin to joy deep down in her heart, when she thought of the love tendered to her by one she had learned to esteem and to trust. Those sweet, sudden glimpses of the golden land of sunshine beyond kept flashing before her eyes, and thrilled her with feelings that made her almost afraid. She did not know what it all meant. She did not know that it was but the foreshadowing of the deep love that was rooting itself, all unknown, in the tenderest fibres of her nature. She never thought she loved Randolph Trevlyn, but she was conscious of a strange exultation and stress of feeling, which she attributed to the enthusiasm of the sacrifice she had made for those she loved. She did not yet know the secret of her own heart. [Illustration] CHAPTER THE EIGHTH. “WOO’D, AND MARRIED, AND A’.” So Monica had engaged herself to her kinsman, Randolph Trevlyn, and the neighbourhood, though decidedly astonished at this sudden surrender of liberty on the part of the fair, unapproachable girl, could not but see how desirable was the match from every point of view, and rejoice in the thought that Trevlyn would never lose its well-loved lady. As for Monica herself, the days passed by as in a dream—a strong dream of misty sunshine and sweet, faint fragrance, through which she wandered with uncertain steps, led onward by a sense of brighter light beyond.