The poor woman looked up into Billy's face. After years of battling with the world, here for the asking was peace and luxury and wealth incalculable, and--as Kathleen thought--a love that had endured since they were boy and girl together. Yet she shrunk from him a little and clinched her hands before she spoke. "Yes," Kathleen faltered, and afterward she shuddered. And here, if for the moment I may prefigure the Eagle as a sentient being, I can imagine his chuckle. "Please God," thought poor Billy, "I will make her happy. Yes, please God, I can at least do that, since she cares for me." Then he kissed her. "My dear," said he, aloud, "I'll try to make you happy. And--and you don't mind, do you, if I leave you now?" queried this ardent lover. "You see, it's absolutely necessary I should see--see Miss Hugonin about this will business. You don't mind very much, do you--darling?" Mr. Woods inquired of her, the last word being rather obviously an afterthought. "No," said she. "Not if you must--dear." Billy went away, lugging a heart of lead in his breast. Kathleen stared after him and gave a hard, wringing motion of her hands. She had done what many women do daily; the thing is common and sensible and universally commended; but in her own eyes, the draggled trollop of the pavements was neither better nor worse than she. At the entrance of the next walkway Billy encountered Felix Kennaston--alone and in the most ebulliently mirthful of humours. XX But we had left Mr. Kennaston, I think, in company with Miss Hugonin, at the precise moment she inquired of him whether it were not the strangest thing in the world--referring thereby to the sudden manner in which she had been disinherited. The poet laughed and assented. Afterward, turning north from the front court, they descended past the shield-bearing griffins--and you may depend upon it that each shield is adorned with a bas-relief of the Eagle--that guard the broad stairway leading to the formal gardens of Selwoode. The gardens stretch northward to the confines of Peter Blagden's estate of Gridlington; and for my part--unless it were that primitive garden that Adam lost--I can imagine no goodlier place. On this particular forenoon, however, neither Miss Hugonin nor Felix Kennaston had eyes for its comeliness; silently they braved the griffins, and in silence they skirted the fish-pond--silver-crinkling in the May morning--and passed through cloistral ilex-shadowed walks, and amphitheatres of green velvet, and terraces ample and mellow in the sunlight, silently. The trees pelted them with blossoms; pedestaled in leafy recesses, Satyrs grinned at them apishly, and the arrows of divers pot-bellied Cupids threatened them, and Fauns piped for them ditties of no tone; the birds were about shrill avocations overhead, and everywhere the heatless, odourful air was a caress; but for all this, Miss Hugonin and Mr. Kennaston were silent and very fidgetty.