DEAREST PAL AND NOBLEST OF MEN: My poor heart is breaking, I think, and knowing how true I and deep is your love for me I would not have you see my pain. So I have run away from you awhile--fled away to the Silent Places like the poor, hurt creature I am. There I mean to hide until my wound is a little healed and then I shall come back to you, my dear, that I may surround you with my love and teach you how inexpressibly dear you are to Your would-be daughter and ever loving, grateful, DIANA. "Has she money, sir?" I enquired, returning the letter. "Very, very little, I fear." "Then she cannot have gone very far." "Ah, Peregrine--" the proud, old head drooped and the hand that crept upon my dusty coat sleeve was very thin and tremulous; "ah, Peregrine, if you love her, find her again--find her for Love's sake--and the sake of a desolate--heartsick--old man!" "Sir," I answered, covering this twitching hand with my own, "I will--bring her back to you--if I have to travel the world over--I will find her if it takes me all my life and every penny I possess!" Then, mounting my horse, I swung him round and galloped away without further word of farewell or so much as one backward glance. CHAPTER III TELLS HOW I FOUND DIANA AND SOONER THAN I DESERVED It was growing dark when I reached a part of the road that I seemed to recognise; therefore I checked my steed to look about me. Surely it was here or hereabouts that, upon a never-to-be-forgotten day, I had acted the craven and, fleeing in panic, yet (heaven be praised!) had rushed back to be beaten into unconsciousness by Diana's brutal assailant. Surely it was beneath yonder tree that I had waked to find my head pillowed in her lap, her cool hand upon my brow, her lovely face stooped above me full of tender solicitude. Remembering which, I was seized of a sudden passionate longing for the touch of her hand, to behold again this face radiant with love. 'My poor heart is breaking I think--so I have fled away to hide--' As I sat my horse, seeing in fancy the blotted lines of this, her letter, to my yearning was added the triumphant assurance that in spite of everything she loved me still; but this thought in turn was 'whelmed in despair because of the well-nigh hopelessness of my search. And in this moment my wandering gaze lighted upon the shadowy outline of a gate that opened in the hedge upon my right hand, upon a rolling meadow with a gloom of shadowy trees beyond. Next moment I was afoot, leading my horse, for surely this was that gate through which she had led me, swooning with my hurts, across this meadow, amid trees and underbrush, to that ruined and desolate barn which, she had once told me, had ever been her haven of refuge.