Her name, too, tragic and glorious, fired that curiosity of man to possess something rare and old and precious. Of Brakelond he only thought as a fit setting for Gundred’s mystic charm. For Gundred’s serene correctness, so prosaically pleasing in a London drawing-room, became ‘mystic charm’ when associated in the mind of her idealizing lover with the long oaken galleries of Brakelond. And Gundred, for her part, considered the possible glories of position and power only as gifts to confer on her radiant, ridiculous captor. She did what she decently could to please and captivate Kingston, deployed cunning little unsuspected wiles of dress and manner; brightened her garments and her ways; achieved at last that miracle only possible to a first-rate woman, of being gay without becoming skittish. Little need had she of wiles. Her gentle flawlessness satisfied Kingston Darnley completely; and at his time of life, after his experience, he knew enough to be humbly content with satisfaction, asking no more of life, and expecting much less. What folly to let a plump chicken escape from the hand on the chance of a Phœnix flying out of the bush at some far-distant date! Better give thanks that the chicken is at least plump. Kingston Darnley gave thanks accordingly, and dawdled along the happy path that leads to proposal. He could only see perfection everywhere. If Gundred was sometimes unresponsive, that was surely her cold and lovely maidenliness. If her acquiescent sweetness lacked salt at times, and seemed to promise biliousness, the criticism showed, in itself, a bilious bachelor for whose ailment that sweetness had been especially prescribed by Fate. If Gundred’s answers sometimes seemed remote, inadequate, half-hearted, that was but the effort of a loyal soul struggling to get into perfect stride with his, and neglecting the interests of the present for the sake of the future. As he looked and listened, her unruffled pleasantness destroyed for his emotions the grosser terrors of marriage, and yet gifted them with a strange, appealing fascination. Carried away by his approval, he proposed at last, and was placidly accepted by a heart resolutely dissembling its delight. Lady Adela heard the news with joy, and a pound was not too much for Heaven next Sunday. CHAPTER IV ‘My dear,’ said Kingston Darnley to his mother one afternoon, ‘being in love is the strangest thing.’ Long habit had taught him to indulge in soliloquy under the mask of a dialogue with his mother. She allowed him to talk, and never interrupted the flow of his self-communings by any sudden sign of understanding them. Few people are more comfortable to confide in than those who can always be safely reckoned on to understand nothing of what is said to them. Lady Adela laid down her knitting and beamed lovingly at her son over her spectacles. ‘A strange and blessed thing,’ she answered in her soft tones.