BOOK NINTH.
CHAPTER I.
The secret which Guy Darrell did not confide to Alban Morley.
It was a serene noonday in that melancholy interlude of the seasons when autumn has really ceased—winter not yet visibly begun. The same hired vehicle which had borne Lionel to Fawley, more than five years ago, stopped at the gate of the wild, umbrageous grass-land that surrounded the antique Manor House. It had been engaged, from the nearest railway station on the London Road, by a lady, with a female companion who seemed her servant. The driver dismounted, opened the door of the vehicle, and the lady, bidding him wait there till her return, and saying a few words to her companion, descended, and drawing her cloak around her, walked on alone toward the Manor House. At first her step was firm, and her pace quick. She was still under the excitement of the resolve in which the journey from her home had been suddenly conceived and promptly accomplished. But as the path wound on through the stillness of venerable groves, her courage began to fail her. Her feet loitered, her eyes wandered round vaguely, timidly. The scene was not new to her. As she gazed, rushingly gathered over her sorrowful, shrinking mind memories of sportive, happy summer days, spent in childhood amidst those turfs and shades—memories, more agitating, of the last visit (childhood then ripened into blooming youth) to the ancient dwelling which, yet concealed from view by the swells of the undulating ground and the yellow boughs of the giant trees, betrayed its site by the smoke rising thin and dim against the limpid atmosphere. She bent down her head, closing her eyes as if to shut out less the face of the landscape than the images that rose, ghost-like, up to people it, and sighed heavily, heavily. Now—hard by, roused from its bed among the fern, the doe that Darrell had tamed into companionship had watched with curiosity this strange intruder on its solitary range. But at the sound of
