"Your ’usband?" he ejaculated but not because he had any doubt. We walk in twilight until light falls through a window and in that moment of revelation it did not need Gray’s further words to enlighten him. "We was married last Friday into Stowe." To the Hember and St. Cadic Rosevears this was no news; but Mrs. Byron’s death on the night of the wedding, the subsequent rush of work, the funeral, had prevented it from being bruited abroad. The more distant relatives looked at each other and at the young couple, surprised yet, on the whole, pleased. So Gray, sly puss, had picked her man and married him on the quiet. And who was he? Rosevear of Treketh’s son. Not much money there but Mrs. Andrew of Gentle Jane was his auntie and very fond of him. Likely looking chap too! The maid had had her wits about her when she chose him; though, as things had turned out, she was more of a catch than he. And Sabina had probably known! She would be glad the maid was wedding a Rosevear, even though it was one of a different family. Well! well! They sent a sigh after vanished youth and prepared themselves to utter the kind commonplaces of congratulation. The connexion would be a satisfactory one. The young people would live in the old home and the Rosevear tradition be maintained. The hearts of the elders, accepting them as members of the family, blessed them to increase, a long line of stout descendants. The erratic genius, the Lucifer of a later day, was to be driven out that the old order might be continued, world without end. Amen. Instinctively, though the words of congratulation were on their lips the people waited for Byron to take the initiative. They did not know what Gray’s simple statement meant to him, had no suspicion that a dream-castle had been tumbled about his ears, the dream in which he had shrined hope and desire. Destroy these figments and you destroy the purpose of a life and, as a consequence, the will to live. Byron’s dream had not been only of Gray, though she had been at the heart of it—the reddest hottest coal of the fire. He had dreamed too of his strength, that strength through which all else should be added unto him; and he was being gradually forced to see it as an illusion. Some one had been strong, but not he. Some one had given and withheld, had ordained what he should have, what he should go without, but it was not he. He thrust at the young people a question which seemed to them irrelevant. "Did ’er knaw? Did S’bina knaw?" That was the crucial point, the point by which his self-respect must stand or fall. Had Sabina done this thing or was it merely an unforeseen event?