A Monk of Cruta

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

She nodded. "All right. And now, what do you think of my plan? Are you going to London?"

"I think your plan is a very good one indeed, and I shall run up to town to-morrow," he said. "It is very good of you to be so interested."

He looked down into her face, a fair, sweet face it was, and then glanced away over the bare moorland which stretched on one side of them. It was a late November afternoon, and a faint yellow light was lingering in the west, where the sun had just set, colouring the clouds which stretched across the sky in long, level streaks. A fresh, healthy breeze, strong with the perfume of the sea, blew in their teeth, and afar off they could hear the waves dashing against the iron-bound line of northern cliffs. Inland, the country was more cultivated, but hilly and broken up with masses of lichen-covered rock, and little clumps of thin fir trees. He knew the scenery so well. The rugged, barren country, with its great stretches of moorland and little patches of cultivated land, with its silent tarns, its desolation, and the ever-varying music of the sea, they all meant home to him, and he loved them. It had always been so, and yet he felt it at that moment as he had never felt it before. The prospect of that journey to London was suddenly loathsome to him. The clear, physical healthfulness of his North-country home was triumphant, for the moment, over that other passion, which seemed to him then weak and artificial. It seemed to him also, looking down into Lady May's fresh, thoughtful face, that she was somehow in accord with these surroundings,—that she was, indeed, the link, the safeguard which should bind him to them, the good influence which should keep him fit to breathe God's pure air, and to keep himself, as he had ever striven to, sans peur et sans reproche. Paul was no sentimentalist, in the idle and common sense of the word. In his attitude to every-day life, he was essentially practical, sometimes perhaps a little too practical. But he was capable of strong feeling, and it came then with a rush. He leant over towards Lady May, and laid his hand upon her saddle.

"You are very kind and sympathetic," he said softly. "You are always kind."

She looked up at him, pleased, and with a soft look in her deep grey eyes. "You do not give me very much opportunity," she said quietly. "At one time you used to tell me all your troubles; do you remember?"

"Yes! I remember," he answered, almost in a whisper, for they were riding up a grass-grown avenue,—a back way to the Abbey,—and their horses' hoofs sank noiselessly into the soft turf. "Sometimes I have dared to hope that those days may come again."

She was silent, and her head was turned away lest he might see the tears trembling in her eyes. So they rode on for a moment or two, walking their horses in the dim twilight; she in the shadow of the grey wall and the overhanging trees, and he very close to her, with his hand still upon her saddle and his reins loose in his hand.

"If ever they did, if ever I was so fortunate," he went on in a low tone, "you would find your office no sinecure. I have troubles, or rather, one trouble, and a great one, May."

She looked at him for a moment, her eyes full of sympathy. She dimly remembered the time when strange stories were current in the county of Martin de Vaux, and their echo had remained for years. It was not for her to inquire about them, and she never had done so. But that their burden should have fallen upon Paul; it was hard! Her heart was sore with the injustice of it. A woman is a swift and censorious judge of any one who brings trouble upon the man she loves.

He was a little closer to her still; and suddenly the hand which carried her small whip felt itself grasped in strong fingers and held tightly.