"You are wonderful, Honora!" he said, and his voice was not quite under
control. He took her hand, that trembled in his, and he seemed to be
seeking to express something for which he could find no words. Thus may
the King have looked upon Rosamond in her bower; upon a beauty created
for the adornment of courts which he had sequestered for his eyes alone.

Honora, as though merely by the touch of his hand in hers, divined his
thought.

"If you think me so, dear," she whispered happily, "it's all I ask."

And they went in to dinner as to a ceremony. It was indeed a ceremony
filled for her with some occult, sacred, meaning that she could not put
into words. A feast symbolical. Starling was sent to the wine-cellar to
bring back a cobwebbed Madeira near a century old, brought out on rare
occasions in the family. And Hugh, when his glass was filled, looked at
his wife and raised it in silence to his lips.

She never forgot the scene. The red glow of light from the shaded candles
on the table, and the corners of the dining room filled with gloom. The
old butler, like a high priest, standing behind his master's chair. The
long windows, with the curtains drawn in the deep, panelled arches; the
carved white mantelpiece; the glint of silver on' the sideboard, with its
wine-cooler underneath,--these, spoke of generations of respectability
and achievement. Would this absorbed isolation, this marvellous wild love
of theirs, be the end of it all? Honora, as one detached, as a ghost in
the corner, saw herself in the picture with startling clearness. When she
looked up, she met her husband's eyes. Always she met them, and in them a
questioning, almost startled look that was new. "Is it the earrings?" she