She rode through the glade and by her side their walked a rough fellow, who, Gavin thought, would have been much better in Derby jail than idling in the home park at Melbourne. Some chance observations which had fallen from servants' lips had made him acquainted with the circumstances under which these apparent vagrants had come to Derbyshire; and he was quick enough to perceive the connection between the Earl's younger days and this odd visitation. "He knew these fellows in Roumania and they have come here to blackmail him," was the unspoken comment. "Their master is a shady Roumanian Count--one of the long-haired brand, who ogle the women. I take it that she had promised to marry this man, not altogether at her father's bidding, but just because he is romantic liar enough to appeal to one side of her imagination. That's what sent her to London play-acting. She had to escape from this monotony or it would have killed her. Well, I think I know the temperament--a very dangerous temperament which has sent many a woman the wrong way and will send many more before the world is done with." He turned again to the crumbling stone work and passed his hand idly over it. This old house, how many women's hearts had it not imprisoned and stilled! What stories of woman's love and passion could it not unfold if these rotting stones might speak? Many a Di Vernon had gone forth from secret doors to meet her lover; many a one had lived and died with her girlish secret unspoken. Study in those records and the true story of Evelyn, my Lord of Melbourne's daughter, would be read. A brave girl, a lonely girl, full of the stuff of which dreams are made, such he believed her to be. And she had come suddenly into his life, bidding him turn from his work to gaze after her, impotently as a man may look upon a precious thing he may never possess. For even if she loved him, what right had he to speak to her; what position or name had he to give her? He was a worker in clay. Bricks and mortar were not the tokens in which a woman's imagination deals. "If I built a cathedral," he said to himself ironically, "she would merely say, 'How draughty!' It is necessary to be a brigand or a musician to reach the heart of her desires." So the work went on a little savagely. He had the scaffold shifted to the tower of the chapel where the clock face records the deeds of that Lord of Melbourne who fell with Picton's troop at Waterloo. "Time passed above his head but will turn to look at him..." the inscription went. Gavin was cleaning the dust of the century from it when he heard a voice upon the parapet above, and looking up he perceived my Lady Evelyn there, standing by the battlement and watching him curiously. "Is not that dreadfully dangerous?" she asked him, indicating the frail scaffold upon which he stood. He answered at once by another question. "Do you refer to Time? If so, yes, it is always dangerous. Time never sleeps, remember."