Of course Walter Joyce was a hero of heroes for days after the ice-accident. Lady Hetherington for the time being threw off every semblance of insolence and patronage, complimented him in the highest terms on his bravery and presence of mind, and assured him that he had established a claim upon their gratitude which they could never repay. Lord Hetherington was visibly affected, and had great difficulty in thanking his sister's preserver in anything like a coherent manner, lapsing into wild outbursts of "Don't you know!" and explaining that it would be impossible for him to express the feelings and that kind of thing under which he laboured. The gentlemen from the barracks, who had hitherto regarded "old Hetherington's secretary-fellow" as a person utterly unworthy of notice, began to think that they had been mistaken. Young Patey sent a short account of the incident to the sporting paper of which he was an esteemed correspondent, and made a mental note to ask Joyce to play in a football-match which was about to come off, and of which he had the direction. Colonel Tapp not merely assisted in carrying Joyce's senseless body to the tent, whereby he became much damped with drippings, which he nobly ignored, but sent off one of the men for the surgeon of the depôt and evinced an amount of interest and attention very rare in the self-sustained old warrior. Mr. Biscoe said very little indeed; he had been the only person close to the ridge of the broken ice, and he might have heard what Lady Caroline whispered in Joyce's ear, and he might have formed his own opinion of how matters stood from what he saw of them then. But he said nothing. His lips wreathed into a peculiar smile two or three times in the course of the evening, but nothing escaped them; and as he was smoking his after-dinner cigar in his study, he chuckled in a manner which was not to be accounted for by the perusal of anything in the Guardian,which he was supposed to be reading, more especially as he dropped his eyeglass, lay down the paper, and rubbed his hands with intense enjoyment. Just before he dropped asleep, he said--

"It's a thousand pities Joyce is not in orders! He'd have had Chudleigh Rectory when old Whiting goes, as safe as possible; old Whiting can't live long, and Chudleigh must be worth twelve hundred a year."

"Mr. Joyce have Chudleigh? Why should he have had Chudleigh? What makes you think that, Robert?" asked the partner of his joys, from the neighbouring pillow.

"Ah! what indeed?" was all the answer Robert made, and was snoring in an instant.

What did Lady Caroline herself say? Very little. She had a slight access of fever for three days, and kept her room for a week. The first time Joyce saw her was in the library, where he was at work. She came across the room with outstretched hand, and in a few very simple words told him she owed her life to him, and had come to tell him so, and to thank him for it. She was looking wonderfully beautiful; Joyce thought he had never seen her to such advantage. The usual pallor of her cheeks was relieved by a deep rose flush, her violet eyes were more than ever luminous, and she had departed from her usual style of coiffure, her chestnut hair being taken off her forehead, and gathered up in a huge plait at the back of her head.

"You recollect my first mention to you of the intention of having that dreadful ice-party, Mr. Joyce?" said Lady Caroline, after the first speeches of acknowledgment.

"Perfectly; it was in this room, almost where we are sitting now."

"Don't you remember--I hope you don't, and if you don't, it's silly in me to remind you, though I can't help it--that I had been quizzing you about the way in which you remained devoted to your writing, and assured you that we should only attempt to tear you away from it, and to get you to join us on one other occasion before we went to town, and that was to this skating affair? It would have been but a poor look-out for one of the party if you hadn't been there."

"You're giving me much greater credit than I deserve, Lady Caroline; and indeed during all the past week I've felt that I've been placed in a false position in the hero-worship I've received. It certainly happened that I got to the lake before Mr. Biscoe, and I was in quicker than he, but that was because I was a little younger, and had longer limbs. But what I've done to be made so much of, I really don't know!"

"You've saved my life, Mr. Joyce--and won my eternal gratitude!"

And again she stretched out her hand.

"The last is ample reward for the first, Lady Caroline! No other recognition is necessary!"

And he took her hand, but he merely held it for an instant, and bowed over it and let it go. Did not even press it, never thought of attempting to raise it to his lips. Lady Caroline withdrew it quietly with a half laugh. He was the coldest, most insensate, impassible man in the world, she thought; clever, and with a great amount of odd indescribable fascination, but a perfect stone.

He was not. He was a simple, single-minded man, unaccustomed to the ways of flirtation, and utterly uncomprehending any of the mysteries of the craft. He had felt naturally proud of the notice which Lady Caroline had taken of him, had written of it to Marian, attributing it, as he honestly thought it was due, to Lady Caroline's superior education and greater love of books attracting her to him for companionship. He was by no means an observant man, as but few students are, but he had noticed, as he thought, a certain amount of freedom in manners generally at Westhope, which was very different from anything he had previously seen. He ascribed it to the different grade of society, and took but little notice of it. He must, however, have been more than blind not to have seen that in Lady Caroline's conduct towards him at the time of the accident there was something more than this; that in that whispered word, "Walter!" and the tone in which it was whispered, there was an unmistakable admission of a sentiment which he had hitherto chosen to ignore, and which he determined to ignore still.

Walter Joyce was but human, and it would be absurd to deny that his vanity was flattered. He had a sufficient feeling for Lady Caroline, based on gratitude, and nurtured by general liking, to experience a certain compunction for her, placed as she must inevitably find herself by his mode of treatment of her; but regarding that mode of treatment he had never an instant's doubt. He had been brought up in far too strict a school of honour ever to palter with himself for a moment, much less with any one else. His heart was in Marian Ashurst's keeping, his liege love, and in not one single pulsation should it be false to her. All this he had thought out before the interview with Lady Caroline, and his conduct then was exactly as he had prescribed to himself it should be. He took no credit to himself for his coldness and reserve, nor indeed did he deserve any, for he felt as calmly and coldly as he acted. There was but one person in the world with power to make his heart leap, his pulses fill, to rouse his energy with a look, to cloud his hopes with a word. Why was she silent, then? She could not know how critical the time might have been, she should never know it, but he felt that he wanted her advice, advice on the general questions of his life, and he determined to write to her in a way that should elicit it.

Thus he wrote:

"Westhope, Friday.

"MY DEAREST MARIAN,

"I am still without any news of you, although this is the third letter I have written since I received your last. I know that you must have been very much and very specially engaged. I know, as you will have gathered from my last hasty few lines, that poor Tom Creswell is dead, and I feel that you must have been called upon to your utmost to play the part of comforter, and to bring your keen sympathies and busy brains into active use to restore something like a semblance of ordinary comfort to that disordered and desolate household. That you are the mainstay of the family in their trouble, as of course few would be, I happen to know. Did I tell you how? Mr. Gould, who is Lord Hetherington's principal business agent, showed me a letter he had had from you, written in Mr. Creswell's behalf, about the impossibility of the poor old gentleman's carrying out some sale of land, about which he had been previously negotiating, under the existing melancholy circumstances. It seemed so strange to see the handwriting, so familiar, and so dear to me, addressed to another; treating of business topics, and yet conveying information, which was surely interesting to me, but of which I was yet ignorant. However, you had your duty to do to the people who had been so kind to you, and who had done much more than their duty by you during the time of your trials, and I, who know you so well, have no doubt that you have done it, not merely in the letter but in the spirit.

"I suppose that by this time the first shock of grief will have passed away, and that the household at Woolgreaves will be assuming something like its normal state, and I presume, therefore, that you and Mrs. Ashurst will be soon thinking of bringing your visit to an end, even if by this time you have not already entered upon the lodgings which you told me you had in view. I have no doubt that if this be so now, or whenever it comes, both you and Mrs. Ashurst will much miss the material comfort which you have enjoyed during the last few months. It is impossible that it should be otherwise, but you, at all events, have long had a clear idea of your future, and so long as you are with her I do not fear Mrs. Ashurst's becoming a prey to despair. The woman who battled so bravely by your dear father's side is not likely to give way now that the heat of the contest is over, and a retreat, humble indeed, but sufficient for existence, is provided for her. I should almost rather fear the effect of the change upon you. I should very much fear it if I laid much stress upon the opinions with which the last letter I received from you was rife, opinions breathing the very essence of worldly philosophy, but scarcely such as one would expect to find in a young girl's letter to her lover. However, I do not lay much stress on these opinions; I know that it is the fashion just now to affect a cynicism which is not really felt, and to ascribe to one's self faults and follies which have no substantial basis. I am sure that you must have become infected with this idea, and that you wrote under its influence, for nothing could be more opposite than your new doctrine to the teachings of your youth and the example of your parents.

"It is time, however, my dear Marian, that we should each shake ourselves free from any little affectations or delusions which have hitherto possessed us, and make up our minds to look our position resolutely in the face. I say both of us, because I am perfectly conscious of having permitted myself to start in life as the victim of a delusion of a very different kind from yours. I was as sanguine as you were depressed, and when, on the day we parted, you had a notion that there was an end to all happiness to be enjoyed mutually by us, I bad a feeling that I was taking my first step towards the premiership, or the governorship of the Bank of England. I pray God that your idea was as baseless as mine. I know that my position can never be a great or a wealthy one, that all I ever get I must earn by my handwork, and I am perfectly content, so long as I have your approval of my steps, and you yourself as my reward.

"But we must not dream any more, Marian, either of us, and you, especially, must not suffer yourself again, for whatever reason, to be tempted out of your regular sphere. All your attention henceforth must be given to the joint interests which must be paramount in your heart. Life progresses, dear. How the months have slipped away since we parted! and we must not let youth and health and all that is best pass out of it, and leave us still pursuing a flying shadow, and waiting for better days till we shall come together. Not now, or ever, will I take any step as regards my future without your counsel and consent, considering as I do that that future is yours as much as mine. But I want to be assured of your hearty interest and desire for co-operation in my affairs, Marian. I feel sure I have it; I know it is almost absurd in me to doubt its existence, but I have been so long away from you, and you have been so long without writing to me, that I long to read the assurance in your own hand. What would I not give--if I had anything, poor wretch!--to hear it from your lips! but that is impossible just yet.

"Now, what we have to think of is definite and pressing. I must give a decisive answer within a week, and you will see the bearing and importance of that decisive answer on our future. I believe I could stay on here for any time I chose. The big history-book, though I work hard at it every day, is as yet only in its commencement, and I am told that when the family goes to town next week I am to accompany them, and to devote my time in London to purely secretarial work, correcting my lord in his speeches, writing his letters, etc., while the history of the Wests is to remain in abeyance until the autumn. Everybody is particularly kind to me, and had I never 'lifted my eyes to my master's daughter,' like the 'prentice of old, I might have been very happy here. But I have other hopes in view, and a married private secretary would be impossible. It's lucky, then, that there is another ope............