The blood came back to her face at last. "No! But the how?--the why?"
"She suspected the truth!" She was pale again.
"We cheated ourselves. She cared for one of her own kind. Our renunciation was an irony."
Lady Betty bent her head. Her brow was wrinkled for a moment in thought, and her hand trembled visibly.
"An irony--no," she said gently. "We were true to ourselves--the future lies the fairer before us."
She took his arm, as if seeking freer air, and they moved through the throng that continued its compliments, unsuspecting of the proximity of either artist or subject. They stood at last on the great balcony, and looked down on the splendid court agleam with sculpture and greenery.
"I have searched Europe for you!" he said.
"This great change in our lives--it is too wonderful to grasp all at once," she murmured musingly.
"I do not see why we should not stroll round to the Embassy now, and inquire," he suggested stoutly.
"Inquire about what?" she asked, her deep absent look changing to bewilderment.
"As to when they can marry us, of course!"
"Oh, I see," she said, with a quick smile; but her glance was inward again.
"You don't think me precipitate?" he asked uneasily.
"I am thinking of Alice," she returned. "I could have sworn she was the soul of constancy."
UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRAHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON.
LIST OF BOOKS PUBLISHED BY BROWN, LANGHAM & CO., 78 NEW BOND STREET, LONDON, W.
With Portrait and Illustrations. 8vo. 15s. net.
Mr. Burt's life is indissolubly bound up with the rise of the Labour Movement in this country.
"Mr. Aaron Watson places at the beginning of his deeply interesting biography of Mr. Thomas Burt the following tribute, paid to the veteran labour leader by Earl Grey: 'The finest gentleman I ever knew was a working miner in England, whose gentleness, absolute fairness, instinctive horror of anything underhand or mean, or anything that was not the strictest fair-play, gave him a character that enabled him to rise to the position of Privy Councillor.' Never was eulogy better deserved.... Mr. Burt's host of friends will be grateful to Mr. Aaron Watson for his excellent work."--_Daily News._
Author of "Castles and Châteaux of Old Touraine," "Cathedrals of Northern France," &c.