As he passed through the hall he looked out. The mist of the night before had sought out every twig and leaflet, and had silvered it to meet the sun. The rime on the grass looked cool and tempting. Charles's head ached, and he went out for a moment and stood in the crisp still air. The rooks were cawing high up. The face of the earth had not altered during the night. It shimmered and was glad, and smiled at his grave, care-worn face. "Hallo!" called a voice; and Ralph's head, with his hair sticking straight out on every side, was thrust out of a window. "I say, Charles, early bird you are!" "Yes," said Charles, looking up and leisurely going in-doors again; "you are the first worm I have seen." He found Dare, as he expected, in the drawing-room, and proceeded at once to the business he had in hand. "I am glad you are down early," he said. "You are the very man I want." "Ah!" replied Dare, shaking his head, "when the heart is troubled there is no sleep, none. All the clocks are heard." "Possibly. I should not wonder if you heard another in the course of half an hour, which will mean breakfast. In the mean time----" "I want no breakfast. A sole cup of----" "In the mean time," continued Charles, "I have some news for you." And, disregarding another interruption, he related as shortly as he could the story of Stephens's recognition of him in the door-way, and the subsequent revelations in the prison concerning Dare's marriage. "Where is this man, this Stephens?" said Dare, jumping up. "I will go to him. I will hear from his own mouth. Where is he?" "I don't know," replied Charles, curtly. "It is a matter of opinion. He is dead!" Dare looked bewildered, and then sank back with a gasp of disappointment into his chair. Charles, whose temper was singularly irritable this morning, repeated with suppressed annoyance the greater part of what he had just said, and proved to Dare that the fact that Stephens was dead would in no way prevent the illegality of his marriage being proved. When Dare had grasped the full significance of that fact he was quite overcome. "Am I, then," he gasped--"is it true?--am I free--to marry?" "Quite free." Dare burst into tears, and, partially veiling with one hand the manly emotion that had overtaken him, he extended the other to Charles, who did not know what to do with it when he had got it, and dropped it as soon as he could. But Dare, like many people whose feelings are all on the surface, and who are rather proud of displaying them, was slow to notice what was passing in the minds of others. He sprang to his feet, and began to pace rapidly up and down. "I will go after breakfast--at once--immediately after breakfast, to Slumberleigh Rectory." "I suppose, in that case, Miss Deyncourt is the person whose name you would not mention the other day?" "She is," said Dare. "You are right. It is she. We are betrothed. I will fly to her after breakfast."