A week after the drive to Wimperfield Miss Wendover received a very big box of peaches and grapes, enclosing a very brief letter from Vernon Palliser to his cousin Ida.

‘My dear Ida — I venture to send Miss Wendover some of our fruit,’ he wrote, ‘for I understood her to say she has not much glass, and grows only flowers. Peter and I are just off to Scotland, where I suppose we shall do a little shooting, and I hope a good deal of yachting and fishing. I wish you and that nice plump little friend of yours — Bessie, I think you called her — were coming to us. Such a jolly life, bobbing about between the islands and the mainland, with the chance of an occasional storm. But I shall look forward to seeing you again in October, when I hope Miss Wendover will bring you over to stay for a week or two. What splendid ideas she has about summering hunters! — never met a more sensible woman. Always your affectionate cousin, VERNON PALLISER.’

Aunt Betsy was pleased with the tribute of hothouse fruit, and even more gratified by that remark about summering horses.

‘Your cousin is a fine thoroughbred young fellow,’ she said. ‘If I had not been fully satisfied you came from a good stock, by my knowledge of your own organisation, I should be sure of the fact now I have seen those two young men. They are all that Englishmen ought to be.’

Ida was silent, for to her mind there was one Englishman who more completely realised her ideal of manhood — one who was no less generous and outspoken than her kind young cousins, but whose intellectual gifts, whose highly cultivated mind, and passionate love of all that is most beautiful in life, made him infinitely their superior.

And now came, perhaps, the most bitter trial of a young life which had already seen more cloud than sunshine. The hour had come when Ida told herself that she must no longer dawdle along the flowery path of sin, no longer palter with fate. Stern duty must be obeyed, She must leave Kingthorpe. It was no longer a question of feeling, but a question of conscience — right against wrong, truth against falsehood, honour against dishonour; for she knew in her heart of hearts that Brian loved her, and that she gave him back his love, measure for measure. He had said nothing definite; she had contrived to ward off anything like a declaration; but she had not been able to prevent his absorbing her society on all possible occasions, taking possession of her, as it were, as of one who belonged to him in the present and the future, deferring to her lightest wish as only a lover defers to his mistress, studying her preferences in everything, and hardly taking the trouble to hide his comparative indifference to the society of other people. It had come to this, and she knew that there must be no further delay.

One evening, when she and Aunt Betsy had been dining alone, and had returned to the drawing-room, where it was Ida’s custom at this hour to play her kind patroness to sleep with all the dreamiest and most pensive melodies in her extensive répertoire, the girl suddenly faltered in her playing, wandered from one air into another, and with a touch so uncertain that Aunt Betsy, who was fast lapsing into dreamland, became broad awake again all at once, and wanted to know the reason why.

‘Is anything the matter? Are you ill, child?’ she asked, abruptly.

Ida rose from the piano, where her tears had been dropping on the keys, and came out of the shadowy corner to the verandah, where Aunt Betsy sat among her roses, wrapped in a China crape shawl, one of the gifts of that Indian warrior, Colonel Wendover, August was nearly over, but the weather was still warm enough for sitting out of doors in the twilight.

‘What is the matter, Ida? What has happened?’ repeated Miss Wendover, with her hand on the girl’s shoulder, as she bent to listen to her.

Ida was kneeling by Aunt Betsy’s side, her head leaning against the arm of her chair, her face hidden.

‘Nothing, nothing that you can help or cure, dearest friend,’ she answered in a broken voice. ‘You must know how good you have been to me. Yes, even you must know that, although it is your nature to make light of your goodness. I think you know I love you and am grateful. Tell me that you believe that before I say another word.’

‘I do believe it. Your whole conduct since you have been with me has shown as much,’ answered Miss Wendover, calmly. She saw that Ida was powerfully moved, and she wanted to tranquillise her. ‘What is the meaning of this preface?’

‘Only that I must ask you to let me leave you.’

‘Leave me! Oh, you want a holiday, I suppose? — that is natural enough. We needn’t be tragic about that. You want to go over to Dieppe to see your people?’

‘I want to go away from Kingthorpe for ever.’

‘For ever? Ah, now we are really tragic!’ said Miss Wendover, lightly, her broad, firm white hand tenderly smoothing the girl’s hair and brow. ‘My dear child, what has gone amiss with you? Something has, I can see. Have you and Miss Rylance quarrelled? I know she is a viper; but I did not think she would play any of her viperish tricks with my property.’

‘Miss Rylance has done nothing. I have quarrelled with nobody. I love and honour you and the whole house of Wendover with all my heart and mind. But there is a reason — a reason which I implore you to refrain from asking — why I ought never to have come into your house, as I did come — why I ought to leave it — must leave it for ever!’

‘This is very mysterious,’ said Aunt Betsy, thinking deeply. ‘I could understand a reason — which might exist in a girl’s romantic mind — a mistaken generosity, or a mistaken pride — the outcome of late events — which might urge you to run away — like that always wrong-headed and misguided young person, the heroine of a novel: but what reason there could have been when you came to me last winter against your coming — no — that is more than I can comprehend.’

‘You are not to comprehend. It is my secret — my burden — which I must bear. I want you to believe me, that is all — only to believe me when I say that I love you dearly, and that I have been unspeakably happy in your house — and just quietly let me go and seek my fortune elsewhere — without saying anything to anybody until I am gone.’

‘And a nice weeping and wailing th............