At this point Malham's hard face would soften into the tender, humorous smile which was reserved for but one person on earth--for Celia Bevan, a high school mistress to whom he had been engaged for five long years. Pew of his friends, and none of his acquaintances, had heard of his engagement, for Malham was a secretive man, and Celia was not in his own set. He had met her on a fishing holiday when they happened to be staying in the same small inn, and for the first and only time in his life had been carried away on a wave of impulse. Five years ago, and--this was the extraordinary thing!--his heart had never regretted the madness. Celia was poor, unknown, getting perilously near thirty, but there was an ageless charm about Celia, an ever-new, ever-changing, ever-lovable charm, which held him captive, despite the cold remonstrances of his brain. Nowadays he met dozens of wealthy and distinguished women, but no duchess in her purple had for him the charm of Celia in her shabby blouses, seated in her shabby lodging, wrestling with the everlasting pile of exercise books. She loved him--heavens! how she loved him. There was nothing tepid about Celia. Even eight years' teaching at a high school had been powerless to beat down her individuality, or damp the ardour of her spirit. She loved him with a passion which was her very being, and he loved her in return as devotedly as it was in his nature to love. She was his mate, the one woman in the world who could understand, and sympathise, and console. But--there was Lady Anne! Lady Anne was the unmarried daughter of his most influential political patron, and of late it had been impossible for Malham to disguise from himself the fact that Lady Anne had fallen a victim to his powerful personality and clever, versatile tongue. She was a pitiful creature, this scion of a noble house, a thin, wizened woman of thirty-seven, plain with a dull, sexless plainness which had in it no redeeming point, so diffident as to be almost uncouth in manner, overwhelmed with the consciousness of her own social failure. Wealthy and influential as was her family, no one had ever wished to marry "poor Anne," yet hidden within the unattractive exterior lived a loving, sensitive heart, which had gone hungry from the hour of her birth. Now as it happened Lady Anne's brother was nursing a certain constituency in the neighbourhood of his father's place, and being neither clever nor fluent he was thankful to avail himself of the services of an eloquent young barrister, who was ever ready to run down from town for a few days' visit, and deliver a rousing address in furtherance of his cause. So it came about that during the summer and autumn John Malham was a frequent visitor at Home Castle, and at each visit the secret of Lady Anne became more and more apparent to the eyes of onlookers.