"Sitting here alone, sometimes I seem to feel it all--all the capacity for loving sacrifice and all the energy of human passion which wrought itself into that beautiful offering of its devotion, and made it acceptable. But, tell me, Evadne--are you very happy?" "I am _too_ happy, I think, auntie. But I can't talk about it. I must keep the consciousness of it close in my own heart, and guard it jealously, lest I dissipate any atom of it by attempting to describe it." "Do you think, then, that love is such a delicate thing that the slightest exposure will destroy it?" "I don't know what I think. But the feeling is so fresh now, auntie, I am afraid to run the risk of uttering a word, or hearing one, that might tarnish it." She strolled out into the garden during the afternoon, and sat on a high-backed chair in the shade of the old brick wall, with eyes half closed and a smile hovering about her lips. The wall was curtained with canaryensis, virginia creeper rich in autumn tints, ivy, and giant nasturtiums. Great sunflowers grew up against it, and a row of single dahlias of every possible hue crowded up close to the sunflowers. They made a background to the girl's slender figure. She sat there a long time, happily absorbed, and Mrs. Orton Beg's memory, as she watched her, slipped back inevitably to her own love days, till tears came of the inward supplication that Evadne's future might never know the terrible blight which had fallen upon her own life. Evadne walked through the village on her way back to Fraylingay. A young woman with her baby in her arms was standing at the door of her cottage looking out as she passed, and she stopped to speak to her. The child held out his little arms, and kicked and crowed to be taken, and when his mother had intrusted him to Evadne, he clasped her tight round the neck, and nibbled her cheek with his warm, moist mouth, sending a delicious thrill through every fibre of her body, a first foretaste of maternity. She hurried on to hide her emotion. But all the way home there was a singing at her heart, a certainty of joys undreamt of hitherto, the tenderest, sweetest, most womanly joys--her own house, her own husband, her own children--perhaps; it all lay in that, her _own_! CHAPTER XII The next few weeks were decked with the richness of autumn tints, the glory of autumn skies; but Evadne was unaware of either. She had no consciousness of distinct days and nights, and indeed they were pretty well mingled after she went to town, for she often danced till daylight and slept till dusk. And it was all a golden haze, this time, with impressions of endless shops; of silks, satins, and lovely laces; of costly trinkets; of little notes flying between London and Shorncliffe; and of everybody so happy that it was impossible to help sitting down and having a good cry occasionally.