Diana found it quite impossible to await in the library, the return of the motor.

She moved restlessly to and fro in her own bedroom, from the windows of which she could see far down the avenue.

When at last her car came speeding through the trees, it seemed to her a swiftly approaching Nemesis, a relentless hurrying Fate, which she could neither delay nor avoid. It ran beneath the portico; paused for one moment; then glided away towards the garage. She had not seen David alight; but she knew he must now be in the house.

She waited a few moments, then passed slowly down the stairs.

Oh, lovely and belovÈd home of childhood's days!

White and cold, yet striving bravely after complete self-control, Diana crossed the hall, and turned the handle of the library door.

As she entered, David was standing with his back to her, looking up intently at the portrait of Falcon Rivers.

He turned as he heard the door close, and came forward, a casual remark upon his lips, expressing the hope that it had not been inconvenient to send the motor so early—then saw Diana's face.

Instantly he took her trembling hands in his, saying gently: "It is all right, Miss Rivers. I can do as you wish. I am quite clear about it, to-day. You must forgive me for not having been able to decide yesterday."

Diana drew away her hands and clasped them upon her breast.

Her eyes dilated.

"David? Oh, David! You will? You will! You will——!"

Her voice broke. She gazed at him, helplessly—dumbly.

David's eyes, as he looked back into hers, were so calmly tender, that it somehow gave her the feeling of being a little child. His voice was very steadfast and unfaltering. He smiled reassuringly at Diana.

"I hope to have the honour and privilege, Miss Rivers," he said, "of marrying you on the morning of the day I sail for Central Africa."

Diana swayed, for one second; then recovered, and walked over to the mantel-piece.

Not for nothing was she a descendant of those old knights in silver armour, in the window on the staircase. She leaned her arms upon the mantel-piece, and laid her head upon them. She stood thus quite still, and quite silent, fighting for self-control.

David, waiting silently behind her, lifted his eyes from that bowed head, with its mass of golden hair, and encountered the keen quizzical look of the portrait above her.

"I shall win," said Uncle Falcon silently to David, over Diana's bowed head. But David, who knew he was about to defeat Uncle Falcon's purpose utterly, looked back in silent defiance.

The amber eyes twinkled beneath their shaggy brows. "I shall win, young man," said Uncle Falcon.

Presently Diana lifted her head. Her lashes were wet, but the colour had returned to her cheeks. Her lips smiled, and her eyes grew softly bright.

"David," she said, "you must think me such a goose! But you can't possibly know what my home means to me; my home and—and everything. Do you know, when I read your telegram saying: 'Consultation unnecessary. Have decided,' I felt quite convinced you had decided that you could not do it; and, oh, David, I have left Riverscourt forever, a hundred times during this terrible hour! Really it would have been kinder to have said: 'I will marry you,' in the telegram."

David smiled. "I am afraid that might have caused a good deal of comment at both post-offices," he said. "But I was a thoughtless ass not to have put in a clear indication as to which way the decision had gone."

"Hush!" cried Diana, with uplifted finger. "Don't call yourself names, my dear David, before the person who is going to promise to honour and obey you!" Diana's spirits were rising rapidly. "Now sit down and tell me all about it. What made you feel you could do it? Why didn't you need to consult Sir Deryck? Did you come to a decision last night, or this morning? You will keep to it, David?"

David sat down in an armchair opposite to Diana, who had flung herself into Uncle Falcon's.

The portrait, hanging high above their heads, twinkled down on both of them.

"I shall win," said Uncle Falcon.

David did not "tie himself up in knots" to-day. He sat very still, looking at Diana with those calm steadfast eyes, which made her feel so young and inconsequential, and far removed from him.

He looked ill and worn, but happy and at rest; and, as he talked, his face wore an expression she had often noted when, in preaching, he became carried away by his subject; a radiance, as of inner glory shining out; a look as of being detached from the world, and independent of all actual surroundings.

"Undoubtedly I shall keep to it, Miss Rivers," he said, "unless, for any reason, you change your mind. And I saw light on the subject this morning."

"Oh, then you 'slept on it,' as our old nurses used to say?"

David smiled.

"I never had an old nurse," he said. "My mother was my nurse."

Diana did not notice that her question had been parried. "And what made you feel it right this morning?" she asked.

David hesitated.

"Light came—through—the Word," he said at last, slowly.

"Ha!" cried Diana. "I felt sure you would look for it there. And I sat up nearly all night—I mean until midnight—searching my Bible and Prayer-book. But the only applicable thing I found was: 'I will not fail David.' It would have been more comforting to have found: 'David will not fail me!'"

David laughed.

"We shall not fail each other, Miss Rivers."

"Why do you call me 'Miss Rivers'? It is quite absurd to do so, now we are engaged."

"I do not call ladies by their Christian names, when I have known them only a few days," said David.

"Not when you are going to marry them?"

"I have not been going to marry them, before," replied David.

"Oh, don't be tiresome, Cousin David! Are you determined to accentuate our unusual circumstances?"

David's clear eyes met hers, and held them.

"I think they require accentuating," he said, slowly.

Diana's eyes fell before his. She felt reproved. She realised that in the reaction of her immense relief, she was taking the whole thing too lightly.

"Cousin David," she said, humbly, "indeed I do realise the greatness of this that you are doing for me. It means so much; and yet it means so little. And just because it means so little, and never can mean more, it was difficult to you to feel it right to do it. Is not that so? Do you know, I think it would help me so much, if you would tell me exactly what seemed to you doubtful; and exactly what it was which dispelled that doubt."

"My chief difficulty," replied David, speaking very slowly, without looking at Diana—"my chief difficulty was: that I could not consider it right, in the sight of God, to enter into matrimony for reasons other than those for which matrimony was ordained; and to do so, knowing that each distinctly understood that there was never to be any question of fulfilling any of the ordinary conditions and obligations of that sacred tie."

David paused.

"In fact," he said, after a few moments of deliberation, "we proposed marrying each other for the sake of other people."

"Yes," cried Diana, eagerly; "your savages, and my tenantry. We wrong no one; we benefit many. Therefore—it must be right."

"Not so," resumed David, gently. "We are never justified in doing wrong in order that good may result. No amount of after good can justify one wrong or crooked action. It seemed to me that, according to the revealed mind and will of God, the only admissible considerations in marriage were those affecting the man and the woman, themselves; that to wed one another, entirely for the sake of benefiting other people, would make of that sacred act an impious unreality, and could not be done by those seeking to live in accordance with the Divine Will."

Again David paused.

"Well?" breathed Diana, rather wide-eyed and anxious. This undoubted impediment to her wishes, sounded insuperable.

David heard the trepidation in her voice, and smiled at her, reassuringly.

"Well," he said, "I was guided to a passage in the Word—a wonderful Old Testament story—which proved that, at all events in one case, God Himself had put out of consideration the man and the woman, their personal happiness, their home together, and had dealt with that wedded life in a manner which was solely to benefit a community of people. This one case was enough for me. It furnished the answer to all my questions; set at rest all my doubts. True, the case was unique. But so is ours. Undoubtedly it took place many centuries ago; but were not the Divine Law and Will, in their entirety, revealed in what we call 'olden days'? Biblical manners and customs may vary according to clime, century, or conditions; but Bible ethics are the same from Genesis to Revelation; they never vary throughout the centuries, and are therefore changeless for all time. I stand or fall by the Word of my God, revealed in Eden; just as confidently as I stand or fall by the Word of my God, spoken from the rainbow throne of Revelation; or, as it shall one day be spoken, from the great white throne, which is yet to come. It is the same, yesterday, to-day, and forever. I hold the Bible to be inspired from the first word to the last. Let one line go, and you may as well give up the whole. If men begin to pick and choose, the whole great book is swept into uncertainty. Either it is impregnable rock beneath our feet, or it is mere shifting sand of man's concoction and contrivance; in which case, where can essential certainties be found?"

David's eyes shone. His voice rang, clarion clear in its assurance. He had forgotten Diana; he had forgotten himself; he had forgotten the vital question under discussion.

Her anxious eyes recalled him.

"Ah, where were we? Yes; the Divine ethics are unchangeable. We can say of our God: 'He is the Father of Lights, with Whom is no variableness, neither shadow that is cast by turning.' Therefore there is no shadow in the clear light which came to me last night—from above, I honestly believe. I may be wrong, Miss Rivers; a man can but act according to his conscientious convictions. I am convinced, to-day, that your suggestion is God's will for us, in order that we may be made a greater blessing to many. I believe I was guided to that passage so that it might dispel a doubt, which otherwise would certainly have remained an insurmountable obstacle in the way of the fulfilment of your wishes."

"Who were the people?" asked Diana, eagerly. "Where was the passage?"

David turned his head, and looked out of the window.

He had expected this, but, until Diana actually put the question, he had postponed a definite decision as to what he should answer.

He looked at the clear frosty sky. A slight wind was stirring the leafless branches of the beeches. He could see the powdery snow fall from them in glistening showers.

He did not wish Diana to read that passage in Ezekiel. It seemed to him, she could not fail to know at once, that she was the desire of his eyes, if she read it. This would dawn on her, as it had dawned on him—a sudden beam of blinding illumination—and there would be an end to any service he might otherwise have rendered her.

"I would rather you did not read the passage," he said. "Much of it is not applicable. In fact, it required logical deduction, and reasoning by analogy, in order to arrive at the main point."

"And do you not consider me capable of logical deduction, or of reasoning by analogy, Cousin David?"

He flushed.

"How stupidly I express myself. Of course I did not mean that. But—there are things in the story, Miss Rivers, I do not wish you to see."

Diana laughed.

"My good Cousin David, it is quite too late to begin shielding me! In fact I never have been the carefully guarded 'young person.' I have read heaps of naughty books, of which, I daresay, you have never even heard!"

David winced. "Once more, I must have expressed myself badly," he said. "I will not try again. But you must forgive me if I still decline to give you the passage."

"Very well. But I shall hunt until I find it," smiled Diana, in playful defiance. "Did you use a concordance last night, Cousin David? I did. I looked out 'David'—pages and pages of it! I wondered whether you were looking out 'Diana.'"

He smiled. "I should only have found 'Diana of the Ephesians,'" he said; "and, though she fell mysteriously from heaven, she was quite unlike my Lady of Mystery."

"Who arrived in a motor-car," laughed Diana. "Do you know, when you told me you had called me—that, I thought it quite the most funnily unsuitable name I had ever heard. I realised how the Hunt would roar if they knew."

"You see," said David, "the Greek meaning of 'mystery' is: 'What is known only to the initiated.'"

"And you were not yet initiated?" suggested Diana.

"No," replied David. "The Hunt was not initiated."

Diana looked at him keenly. Cousin David was proving less easy to understand than she had imagined.

"Let us talk business," she said. "I will send for Mr. Inglestry this afternoon. How immensely relieved he will be! He can manage all legal details for us—the special license, and so forth. Of course we must be married in London; and I should like the wedding to be in St. Botolph's, that dear old church in Bishopsgate; because Saint Botolph is the patron saint of travellers, and that church is one where people go to pray for safe-keeping, before a voyage; or for absent friends who are travelling. I can return there to pray for you, whenever I am in town. So shall it be St. Botolph's, David?"

"If you wish it," he said.

"You see, we could not have the wedding here or at Brambledene. It would be such a nine days' wonder. We should never get through the crowds of people who would come to gaze at us. I don't intend to make any mystery of it. I shall send a notice of our engagement to the papers. But I shall say of the wedding: 'To take place shortly, owing to the early date already fixed for the departure of the Rev. David Rivers to Central Africa.' Then no one need know the exact day. Chappie and Mr. Inglestry can be our witnesses; and you might get Sir Deryck. What time does the boat start?"

"In the afternoon, from Southampton. The special train leaves Waterloo at noon."

"Capital!" cried Diana. "We can be married at half-past ten, and drive straight to the station, afterwards. There is sure to be a luncheon-car on the train. We can have our wedding-breakfast en route, and I can see you off from Southampton. I have always wanted to see over one of those big liners. I may see you off, mayn't I, Cousin David?"

"If you wish," he said, gently.

"I can send my own motor down to Southampton the day before, and it will be an easy run back home, from there. We can hire a car for the wedding. Wouldn't that be a good plan?"

"Quite a good plan," agreed David.

"God-papa shall marry us," said Diana; "and then I can make him leave out anything in the service I don't want to have read."

David sat up instantly.

"No," he said; "to that I cannot agree. Not one word must be omitted. If we are married according to the prescribed rules of our Church, we must not pick and choose as to what our Church shall say to us, as we humbly stand before her altar. I refuse to go through the service if a word is omitted."

Diana's eyes flashed rebellion.

"My dear Cousin David, have you read the wedding service?"

"I know it by heart," said David Rivers.

"Then you must surely know that it would simply make a farce of it, to read the whole, at such a wedding as ours."

"Nothing can make a farce of a Church service," said David firmly. "We may make a sham of our own part in it; but every word the Church will say to us, will be right and true."

"I must have certain passages omitted," flashed Diana.

"Very well," said David, quietly. "Then there can be no wedding."

"David, you are unreasonable and obstinate!"

David regarded her quietly, and made no answer.

Diana's angry flush was suddenly modified by dimples.

"Is this what people call finding one's master?" she inquired. "It is fortunate for our peace, dear Cousin, that we part on the wedding-day! I am accustomed to having my own way."

David's eyes, as he looked into hers, were sad, yet tender.

"The Church will require you, Miss Rivers, to promise to obey. Even your god-father will hardly go on with the ceremony, if you decline to repeat the word. I don't think I am a tyrant, or a particularly domineering person. But if, between the time we leave the church and the sailing of my boat, I should feel it necessary to ask you to do—or not to do—a thing, I shall expect you to obey."

"Brute!" cried Diana. "I doubt if I shall venture so far as the station. Just to the church door, we might arrive, without a wrangle!" Then she sprang up, all smiles and sunshine. "Come, my lord and master! An it please you, I hear the luncheon-gong. Also the approach of Chappie, who responds to the call of the gong with a prompt and unhesitating obedience, which is more than wifely! Quick, my dear David, your hand.... Come in, Chappie! We want you to congratulate us! Your advice to me at breakfast appeared so excellent, that I have lost no time in following it. I have promised to marry my Cousin David, before he sails for Central Africa!"