my thoughts wandered off to the coming month at Mondisfield, and
pictured violet eyes while he talked of grey, it was not from any
lack of sympathy with my friend.

Derrick was not of a self-tormenting nature, and though I knew he
was amazed at the thought that such a girl as Freda could possibly
care for him, yet he believed most implicitly that this wonderful
thing had come to pass; and, remembering her face as we had last
seen it, and the look in her eyes at Tresco, I, too, had not a
shadow of a doubt that she really loved him. She was not the least
bit of a flirt, and society had not had a chance yet of moulding her
into the ordinary girl of the nineteenth century.

Perhaps it was the sudden and unexpected change of the next day that
makes me remember Derrick's face so distinctly as he lay back on the
smooth turf that afternoon in Netley Abbey. As it looked then, full
of youth and hope, full of that dream of cloudless love, I never saw
it again.



Chapter III.

"Religion in him never died, but became a habit--a habit of enduring
hardness, and cleaving to the steadfast performance of duty in the
face of the strongest allurements to the pleasanter and easier
course."
Life of Charles Lamb, by A. Ainger.

Derrick was in good spirits the next day. He talked much of Major