"'Sometimes you will let me forget graver anxieties, graver cares, the troubles of my life, in talking to you?'
"Then I saw my difficulty.
"'I will do all that I possibly can,' I said; 'but——'
"'But what?' he asked. 'Tell me the difficulty.'
"How could I? I could not look into his face, and tell him my mother disliked and disapproved of him.
"'I think I understand,' he said, with a low laugh. 'If I were a duke, with two or three fine estates, there would be no objection to me; as it is, perhaps her grace has told you the Studleighs are unfortunate?'
"'Yes, she has told me so, but I do not believe it,' I hastened to reply.
"'Thank you; you are generous. I shall trust in your generosity, Lady Hereford.'
"Then he went away, and the brightness of the sun, the sky, the flowers, went with him. Yet I was strangely happy, with a new, strange, shy happiness. When other people, whom I had neither liked nor cared for, talked to me, I found that I had a fresh stock of patience—that I had such a fountain of happiness in my own heart I had abundance to shower upon others. The whole world changed to me from that day. I lived only in the hope of seeing Captain Studleigh. I counted the hours when I was away from him. Unfortunately for me, I found an aider and abettor in Lady Agnes Delapain. My mother did not even know that she was acquainted with him, and I—alas!—never told her.
"Lady Agnes had a beautiful villa at Twickenham, and it was no unusual thing for me to spend two or three days with her. It was cruel to betray my mother's trust; there is no excuse for it, nor was there any for my friend. We never made any positive appointment. I never told him when I was going to Twickenham, yet he always seemed to know by instinct. Lord Delapain held some important office under the government, so that he was seldom at home. We three, Lady Delapain, Captain Studleigh, and myself, spent whole days together, sometimes in the grounds that surrounded her home, or on the river which ran close by.