They felt much drawn to each other. Laughter and all feverish thoughts were swept away by the breezes of their passage through the night. They were old friends now! An affection had sprung up between them which was to be a real and enduring thing. They were to be dear friends always, and that would be "perfectly sweet." Rita had been so lonely. She had wanted a friend so. He was going home on the morrow. He had been too long away. But he would be up in town again quite soon, and meanwhile they would correspond. "Dear little Rita," he said, as he held her hand outside the door of the block of flats in Kensington. "Dear child, I'm so glad." It was a clear night and the clocks were striking twelve. "And I'm glad, too," she answered,--"Gilbert!" He was soon at his club, had paid the chauffeur and dismissed him. There was no one he wanted to talk to in either of the smoking rooms, and so, after a final peg he went upstairs to bed. He was quite peaceful and calm in mind, very placidly happy and pleased. To-morrow he would go home to Mary. He said his prayers, begging God to make this strange and sweet friendship that had come into his life of value to him and to his little friend, might it always be fine and pure! So he got into bed and a pleasant drowsiness stole over him; he had a sense of great virtue and peace. All was well with his soul. "Dear little Rita," were the words he murmured as he fell asleep and lay tranquil in yet another phase of his poisoned life. No dreams disturbed his sleep. No premonition came to tell him whither he had set his steps or whither they would lead him. A mile or two away there was a nameless grave of shame, within a citadel where "pale Anguish keeps the gate and the Warder is Despair." But no spectre rose from that grave to warn him. END OF THE FIRST BOOK BOOK TWO LOTHIAN IN NORFOLK "Not with fine gold for a payment, But with coin of sighs, But with rending of raiment And with weeping of eyes, But with shame of stricken faces And with strewing of dust, For the sin of stately places And lordship of lust." CHAPTER I VIGNETTE OF EARLY MORNING. "GILBERT IS COMING HOME!" "Elle se repand dans ma vie Comme un air imprégné de sel, Et dans mon âme inassouvie Verse le goût de l'éternel." --_Baudelaire._ The white magic of morning was at work over the village of Mortland Royal. From a distant steading came the thin brazen cry of a cock, thin as a bugle, and round the Lothians' sleeping house the bubble of bird-song began. In the orchard before the house, which ran down to the trout stream, Trust, the brown spaniel dog, came out of a barrel in his little fenced enclosure, sniffed the morning air, yawned, and went back again into his barrel. White mist was rising from the water-meadows, billowed into delicate eddies and spirals by the first breeze of day, and already touched by the rosy fingers of dawn.