"She did not complain—but it may have been a long round," said her companion.
* * * * *
After dinner, Helbeck took his pipe into the garden, and walked for long up and down the bowling-green, torn with solitary thought. He had put up his pipe, and was beginning drearily to feel the necessity of going back to his study, and applying himself—if he could force his will so far—to some official business that lay waiting for him there, when a light noise on the gravel caught his ear.
His heart leapt.
"Laura!"
She stopped—a white wraith in the light mist that filled the garden. He went up to her overwhelmed with the joy of her coming—accusing himself of a hundred faults.
She was too miserable to resist him. The storm of feeling through which she had passed had exhausted her wholly; and the pining for his step and voice had become an anguish driving her to him.
"I told you to make me afraid!" she said mournfully, as she found herself once more upon his breast—"but you can't! There is something in me that fears nothing—not even the breaking of both our hearts."
CHAPTER II
A week later the Jesuit scholastic Edward Williams arrived at Bannisdale.