"One thing more," he says, and he kneels at her feet and draws her hands within his own. "Have art and the world and the silence of long years driven me out of your heart, for neither danger nor absence have driven you out of mine?" "I told you I had not forgotten," she says, trembling greatly and growing very pale beneath this strange tumult of feeling that is so full of gladness and yet of fear. "Forgotten--but that is not all. Do you remember the hard things you said to me when we parted? I kept back the error of my life, not because I wished to deceive you, but because I feared the truth would hurt you, and I dreaded to wound your purity and belief. Heaven knows I had suffered then, and have suffered since, enough to atone for a far greater mistake! Were I to come to you now with love as great and memory as faithful, would you, knowing what is in the past, be gentler with my folly? Could you--love--me still?" For all answer she draws her hands from his clasp, and lays them softly round his neck, and her head sinks on his breast. That touch, that caress, are a new and purer baptism of the love that has borne and suffered so much in the years that are dead--dead as their own pain, and laid at rest for ever now, in a grave that many tears have watered. CHAPTER XXIII Tout vient à point à qui sait attendre. "My darling Lauraine," writes Lady Etwynde, sitting at the desk in her pretty morning room, "I am so happy--so happy, I don't know how to find words to tell you all about it. _He_ has come back. Now you can guess the rest, can you not? For thirteen years my darling has been true; thirteen years during which I have made no sign, given no token of relenting. But it is all over and forgotten now. Once more I seem to wake and live. The old, cheerless, weary years that I have dreamt away, have lost their pain, are only full now of a soft regret that my folly delayed my happiness; for oh! how short life seems when one is glad, and the possibilities of the future seem limitless. My poor disciples are in despair, of course. I am bound to neglect them, for Cyril is a more _exigeant_ lover now than in those days of old. He says too much time has been wasted, and I cannot find it in my heart to deny it. We shall be married in February, so I shall hope to have your presence. I wish you would come up soon. I am longing to see you, and your letters are so unsatisfactory. You told me Sir Francis was away. Will you come and stay with me for a few weeks? I should be more than delighted to have you, and I am sure the change would do you good. It seems a long time to wait till Christmas to see you; and we might then go down to Northumberland together. Do make up your mind and say 'Yes.' You would if you knew what pleasure it would give me."