But somehow to-day she had no prevision of what was so imminent. Not even now that she had come with him for a solitary woodland ramble. For that day at least he seemed to have absolved himself from all serious thoughts, from all matters of moment, and to be transformed for the time into the similitude of a laughing, light-hearted school-boy. She could not know—how should she—that it was her presence, that it was the privilege of being able to spend several consecutive hours in her sweet company, which had thus had power to metamorphose him almost beyond his knowledge of himself. From the summit of the keep he had caught a silvery gleam of water in a hollow no great distance away. It was probably the Haunted Pool, about which the guide had told them, and lay darkling in its forest hollow, with a fringe of bulrushes, and outside that a margin of soft turf that was pleasant to the feet. For all it had the name of being haunted, there was nothing weird or uncanny about the place, but rather an air of sweet solitariness as though of one of Nature’s temples, sacred to the shy creatures of the wood, upon which for any human foot to intrude was to break some mystic spell. For a few moments Lisle and Ethel stood drinking in the silent beauty of the scene. Then said Everard, “Suppose we rest here awhile, ‘the world forgetting, by the world forgot.’” Speaking thus he led the way to the trunk of a tree, blown down in some tempest years before, which had been left unheeded where it had fallen. And now at length had come the moment so long looked forward to, so long delayed, so long regarded with apprehension, but now at last seized on with a gladness which he himself felt to be closely allied to audacity. For events might yet make a mockery of his gladness and prove it to have no better foundation than a certain oracular utterance on the part of an old lady who believed herself possessed of a gift for seeing farther into a millstone than her neighbours. All this might come to pass of course, and yet he was not at all dismayed. To-day he felt lifted above the common world. For the time he breathed “an ampler ether, a diviner air.” Nevertheless, it was in very commonplace terms that he began what he had to say. “Do you know, Lady Pell quite startled me as she and I were standing together on the keep before luncheon.” He was not looking at Ethel, but leaning forward and punching holes in the turf with the ferrule of his walking-stick. “I should have thought your nerves proof against anything Lady Pell might have to say to you,” answered Ethel smilingly. “She gave me to understand that her stay at the Chase was drawing to a close, and that in a very little while she and you would be winging your flight elsewhere.” There was a moment’s silence, and then Ethel said: “It was a very natural announcement, and I cannot see what there was in it to startle you.”