Fay was sitting alone in the morning-room at Priesthope, pretending to read, when Michael was announced. When he had been conveyed to a chair and had overcome the breathlessness and semi-blindness that any exertion caused him he saw that she looked ill, and as if she had not slept. "I ought to have come before," he said mechanically, making a great mental effort and putting his hand to his head. "I meant to come, but----" he looked hopelessly at her. He had evidently forgotten what he intended to say. "The day you were coming with Wentworth the Bishop stopped you," said Fay drearily. Every word that Wentworth had said that afternoon was still echoing discordantly in her brain. "That's it. The Bishop," said Michael with relief. "He told me, we had a long talk"--his mind was clearing rapidly--"how you meant to save me." "Yes, I meant to do it," said Fay, looking at him with miserable eyes. "But the Marchesa, the same day--it was in the papers." "I know, I know. The Bishop told me. He said I ought to know that you had been willing to make the sacrifice. I have come to thank you, Fay, and to ask you to forgive me for misjudging you. You see I was not aware you--had thought of it." "It's for you to forgive me, Michael, not me you. And you don't bear me a grudge, do you? I somehow don't feel as if you did. And--oh, Michael, you never, never will say anything or do anything, will you--you _could_, you know--to stop my marrying Wentworth?" Michael's eyes turned on her almost with scorn. "When first we met again, that second time in Italy," he said gently, "do you remember it by the tomb in the gardens? There were roses all over it. I never saw such roses. Perhaps there were none like them. Then I had no faintest thought or hope of marrying you, though I had not forgotten you, Fay. I had put it all away, buried it. You were another man's wife. Now that we meet again--_the position is the same_." Fay looked at Michael. The impersonal detached look which she had set herself to extinguish that day amid the roses, which had been in his face when she saw him first as a lad, which she had _twice_ extinguished, was in his eyes again. There was no pain in them now, any more than there had been when they leaned together beside the tomb: only the shadow of something exceeding sharp, endured, accepted, outlived. Michael looked through her, beyond her. "And yet the position is not quite the same," he said tranquilly, "for then you were married to a man you did not love, and now you are to marry a man you--Oh! Fay, you _do_ care for Wentworth, don't you?" "I would not have kept _him_ in prison for a day," she said, and hid her face in her hands.