“No, no, dearest Joan!” cried Cosmo. “I will not hear of such a thing. I should be worse than Lord Mergwain to lay a feather on the burden he makes you carry.” “I shouldn’t mind it _much_. It would be sweet to hurt my pride for your sake.” “Joan, if you do,” said Cosmo, “I will not touch it. Don’t trouble your dear heart about it. God is taking care of the woman as well as of us. I will send it afterwards.” They sat silent--Cosmo thinking how he was to escape from this poverty-stricken grandeur to his own humble heaven--as poor, no doubt, but full of the dignity lacking here. He knew the state of things at home too well to imagine his father could send him the sum necessary without borrowing it, and he knew also how painful that would be to him who had been so long a borrower ever struggling to pay. Joan’s eyes were red with weeping when at length she looked pitifully in his face. Like a child he put both his arms about her, seeking to comfort her. Sudden as a flash came a voice, calling her name in loud, and as it seemed to Cosmo, angry tones. She turned white as the marble on which they sat, and cast a look of agonized terror on Cosmo. “It is Constantine!” said her lips, but hardly her voice. The blood rushed in full tide from Cosmo’s heart, as it had not for many a day, and coloured all his thin face. He drew himself up, and rose with the look of one ready for love’s sake to meet danger joyously. But Joan threw her arms round him now, and held him. “No, no!” she said; “--this way! this way!” and letting him go, darted into the pathless shrubbery, sure he would follow her. Cosmo hated turning his back on any person or thing, but the danger here was to Joan, and he must do as pleased her. He followed instantly. CHAPTER XXXIII. THE GARDEN-HOUSE. She threaded and forced her way swiftly through the thick-grown shrubs, regardless of thorns and stripping twigs. It was a wilderness for many yards, but suddenly the bushes parted, and Cosmo saw before him a neglected building, overgrown with ivy, of which it would have been impossible to tell the purpose, for it was the product of a time when everything was made to look like something else. The door of it, thick with accumulated green paint, stood half open, as if the last who left it had failed in a feeble endeavour to shut it. Like a hunted creature Joan darted in, and up the creaking stair before her. Cosmo followed, every step threatening to give way under him. The place was two degrees nearer ruin than his room. Great green stains were on the walls; plaster was lying here and there in a heap; the floors, rotted everywhere with damp, were sinking in all directions. Yet there had been no wanton destruction, for the glass in the windows was little broken. Merest neglect is all that is required to make of both man and his works a heap; for will is at the root of well-being, and nature speedily resumes what the will of man does not hold against her.