When she said she needed to lean upon his strength his heart ran like water to her. When she pleaded to him for forgiveness because she had allowed herself to be blackmailed rather than delay their happiness together, his tenderness overflowed and flooded the rock of his logic, of his clear judgment. His arms tightened about her. “I ought to have come to you whether you said yes or no. I knew you were in trouble.” “Not any longer.” She nestled to him. “God knows....” He thrust aside his misgivings later and gave himself up to soothing and nursing her. Peter Kennedy need have had no fear, but then of course this was a Gabriel Stanton he did not know. Gabriel would not hear of Margaret coming down to dinner nor into the drawing-room. She was to stay on the sofa in the music room, to have her dinner served to her there. He said he would carve for her, not be ten minutes away. “All this trouble has made me forget that I have something to tell you. No, no! Not now, not until you have rested.” “I can’t wait, I can’t wait. Tell me now, at once. But I know. I know by your face. It is about our little house. You have seen a house—our house!” “Not until after dinner. I must not tell you anything until you have rested, had something to eat. You have been too agitated. Dear love, you have been through so much. Yes, I have seen the house that seems to have been built for us. Don’t urge me to tell you now. This has been the first cloud that has come between us. It will never happen again. You will keep nothing from me.” “Haven’t I promised? Sworn?” “Sweetheart!” And as he held her she whispered: “You will never be angry with me again?” “I was not angry with you. How could I be?” She smiled. She was quite happy again now, and content. “It looked like anger.” “You focussed it wrongly,” he answered. * * * * * After they had dined; she on her sofa from a tray he supervised and sent up to her, he in solitary state in the dining-room, hurrying through the food that had no flavour to him in her absence: he told her about the little house in Westminster that he had seen, and that seemed to fit all their requirements. It was very early eighteenth-century, every brick of it had been laid before Robert Adam and his brother went to Portland Place, the walls were panelled and the mantelpieces untouched. They were of carved wood in the drawing-room, painted alabaster in the library and bedrooms, marble in the dining-room only. It was almost within the precincts of the Abbey and there was a tiny courtyard or garden. Margaret immediately envisaged it tiled and Dutch. Gabriel left it stone and defended his opinion. There was a lead figure with the pretence of a fountain.