I asked him—it was by an impulse irresistible—why he had never married?
"Because I never found any woman either to love or to believe in. Worse," he added, bitterly, "I did not think there lived the woman who could be believed in."
We had come out of the beech-wood and were standing by the low churchyard wall; the sun glittered on the white marble head-stone on which was inscribed, "Muriel Joy Halifax."
Lord Ravenel leaned over the wall, his eyes fixed upon that little grave. After a while, he said, sighing:
"Do you know, I have thought sometimes that, had she lived, I could have loved—I might have married—that child!"
Here Maud sprang towards us. In her playful tyranny, which she loved to exercise and he to submit to, she insisted on knowing what Lord Ravenel was talking about.
"I was saying," he answered, taking both her hands and looking down into her bright, unshrinking eyes, "I was saying, how dearly I loved your sister Muriel."
"I know that," and Maud became grave at once. "I know you care for me because I am like my sister Muriel."
"If it were so, would you be sorry or glad?"
"Glad, and proud too. But you said, or you were going to say, something more. What was it?"