This stately girl of whom the countryside spoke as of some wondrous divinity, she had promised to become his wife; for him the warm kisses of her lips, the declared secrets of her eloquent eyes, the passionate ardor of her embraces. Yesterday he would have called himself a madman to have dared the meanest of the hopes which now might be regarded with equanimity. To-night he could recall them with that kind incredulity which even attends the first hours of such an avowal as this. What act or purpose of his life had brought him such a reward; why had she deemed him worthy? he asked himself. He was neither a vain man nor a fool. If he contemplated his good fortune with a just trepidation, none the less he believed himself to merit it. She loved him, and henceforth might claim his life. This was the whole lesson of the first brief moments of delight. Gavin was far too excited to think of returning to the Castle; nor had he any wish to speak to the Earl until his own story presented itself to him in some reasonably plausible shape. Under other circumstances, he could have understood the anger and the impatience which such a declaration might bring upon him; but these he did not expect at Melbourne Hall. Robert Forrester seemed to him rather an aristocrat by accident than by birth. He, himself, would not in any case consider the dignity of his own life and calling as beneath that of one whose ancestors had been the jest of London in the days of the Stuarts. He had the right of an honored name, of considerable achievement, and of his youth; and by these he claimed her. Moreover, the secrets of the Hall were now his own; and he understood that the forgotten years stalked as ghosts through the splendid chambers, speaking of passions outlived and of the aftermath to be garnered from their fields. Father and daughter alike were reaping that which had been sown in Bukharest more than twenty years ago. From his just judgment, from her birthright, it lay upon the stranger to save them. Gavin determined to begin his work that very night.