I had left the garden unobserved on that fateful night, returned at once to our riverside cottage, and written her an angry letter, charging her in plain terms with having played me false. In reply, next morning she sent by the gardener a long letter full of mild reproach, in which she asserted that she had no thought of love for anyone beside myself, and that I had entirely misconstrued her relations with Mr Beck. "Strange, indeed, it is that you, of all men, should declare that I love him," she wrote. "Love! If you knew all, you would neither write nor utter that sacred word to me; and even though you are the only man for whom I have a thought, it may, after all, be best if we never again meet. You say you cannot trust me further. Well, I can only reply that my future happiness is in your hands. I am yours." Deeply had I pondered over this curious, half-hysterical, half-reproachful letter, re-reading it many many times, and becoming more and more puzzled over its vague, mysterious meaning. On several occasions I had been upon the point of calling and questioning her, but had refrained. Now, however, this formal invitation to dine had come no doubt through Ella, and I saw in it her desire to personally explain away my jealousy. So I accepted. CHAPTER TWO. "THE NOOK." When, a couple of hours later, we entered Mrs Laing's garden, the first person we encountered was the man I hated, Andrew Beck, in his ill-fitting dress clothes and broad, crumpled shirt-front, with its great diamond solitaire, lounging in a wicker chair at the river's brink, smoking, and in solitude enjoying the glorious sunset that, reflecting upon the water, transformed it into a stream of rippling gold. "The Nook," as Mrs Laing's house was called, was a charming old place facing the river at a little distance above Staines Bridge--long, low, completely covered with ivy and surrounded by a wide sweep of lawn that sloped down to the water's edge, and a belt of old elms beneath the cool shade of which I had spent many delightfully lazy afternoons by the side of my well-beloved. "Ah! Deedes," exclaimed Beck, gaily, rising as we approached, "I was waiting for somebody to come. The ladies haven't come down yet." "Have you seen them?" I asked. "Not yet," he replied; then turning to my friend Dudley, he began chaffing him about a young and wealthy widow he had rowed up to Windsor in our boat a few days before. "We saw you, my boy. We saw you?" he laughed. "You were talking so confidentially as you passed, that Ella remarked that you were contemplating stepping into the dead man's shoes." "No, no," Dudley retorted good-humouredly. "No widows for me. She was merely left under my care for an hour or so, and I had to do the amicable. It's really too bad of you all to jump to such rash conclusions."