When Julian Crymes had departed, it appeared to Anthony that the dance had lost its principal charm, and he wearied of it.

"Come, Urith," said he; "I think we will go. It is late." This was almost the only time he had spoken to her since the opening dance.

"I am ready," she answered; "have been for two hours."

He went forth to see after the horse, and had it brought round to the door. He took his place in the saddle, and Urith sat behind him. They rode forth from the grounds into the high road, along which their course lay for a mile and a half, after which it diverged over moor. Anthony did not speak, and Urith remained equally silent. She had her hand on his belt, and he felt the pressure. He was vexed with her; she had not done him credit that evening. She was uncouth, and unfit to associate with people accustomed to social intercourse—unable to take a part in the amusements such as is expected of every young person. She was decently dressed, but without richness and refinement of taste, and in an old-fashioned gown that had been her mother's. The blood rushed into his head as he thought of how folks must have laughed at him and her when she failed in the opening dance. She was the bride of the evening; every one was prepared to concede to her the place of pre-eminence, but she had shown herself wholly incapable of occupying the place offered her. Then how uninteresting she had appeared beside the other girls present! Their faces had been radiant with mirth, hers dull with discontent and ill-humour.

What if he had appeared there with Julian as his bride? How different all would have been! She would have been well, handsomely dressed, and in all the inherited jewelry of the Glanvilles. She would not have sat a whole evening mum against the wall. She would have shown herself queen of the revel. A warm breath, sweet as if laden with gorse essence, fanned his face at the thought, and was followed at once by a sharp and icy blast. Julian had been refused by him with all her wealth, her rank, her accomplishments, her beauty, and what had he acquired instead?

How could he have supposed that Urith was devoid of all those feminine delicacies of manner which enable a woman to place herself at ease in all society? She had thrown a cold, wet blanket over his joy on this first coming forth into the world from his seclusion at Willsworthy. Then Anthony went on spinning at the same dark thread of ideas. He asked himself what there was in Urith that had attracted him, why it was that he had been so infatuated as to throw his luck to the winds so as to possess her. When the head begins to reckon, then the heart is on the way to bankruptcy.

He counted over the advantages he had rejected, measured the sacrifices he had made for Urith's love, and he asked what she could throw into the scale to outweigh all this?

His hand twitched the bridle, and made the horse toss his head and plunge.

Urith also was occupied with her own thoughts. It had been a relief to her to get away from the laughter and music and revelry of Wringworthy; she thought that, could she be away from the heated room and swaling candles, in the cool night air, under the stars, her tranquillity of mind would return. But it was not so. Anthony's silence, her sense of having offended him by her clumsiness, her dread lest his love for her should be cooling; above all, the haunting spectre of a fear lest Julian should be fulfilling her threat, and be weaning from her the heart of her husband, followed her, and filled her blood with fever. But she strove against this fear, fought it with all the weapons at her command. It was impossible that his love, so strong, so unselfish, which had cost him so much, should evaporate, and that his heart should sway about like a weathercock. The resolution wherewith he had pursued his end, that proved him to have a strong character, and not one that is turned about in every direction.

He had some excuse for being out of humour. He was proud of her. He had desired to let all see what a woman he had got as his wife. He was disappointed, and the depth of his disappointment was the measure of his pride in her.

But then there rose up before her mind the picture of Julian on Anthony's arm, with burning cheeks and bright eyes, looking up in his face, and his eyes resting upon her with a warmth that should be in them only when fixed on the face of his wife. Did she not know that glow in his countenance? That fire in his eye? Had he not looked at her in the same way before they were married?

"Do you intend to drag me off my horse?" asked Anthony, "that you pull at my belt so roughly?"

"And you, that you draw the rein so short and make the mare rear?"

Urith knew nothing of the world. It had ever seemed to her inconceivable that after the bond and seal of marriage the thought of either should stray; that any one should dare to dream of loving a man who was pledged in heart and mind and soul to another woman. Yet Julian as much as told her she still loved Anthony, would use all her fascinations to draw him to her and away from his wife. Was Anthony so weak that his conscience would suffer him to be thus attracted from the place of duty? No—a thousand times, no. He was not so feeble, so lacking in moral strength as this.

They had turned off the high road upon the moor. Here was no stoned road, no road that lay white in the darkness before them, but turf, by daylight recognisable as a road by hoof marks, and the fret of feet over the turf. By night it could be followed only by observing stones set up at intervals and capped with whitewash. Stones had been picked off the roadway and thrown on one side, so that the turf was smooth almost as a racecourse. The head of the horse was turned now somewhat easterly. The sky above the rugged moor range was silvery, and from behind a rocky crest rose the moon, doubled in size by the haze that hung over the moor, and seemed like a mighty flame of the purest white light.

"There, there!" said Urith. "Do you see, Anthony; the moon is up above that old Lyke Way, along which we made our first journey together."

She disengaged her hand from his belt, and put it round his waist.

He raised his head and looked away to the east, at the ridge of moor and rock, black against the glittering orb. He remembered then how he had mounted her on his horse—how he had stood by her and looked into her eyes! He recalled the strange magic that had then come over him—a longing for her, mingled with a presentiment of evil—a fear lest she were drawing him on to destruction. That fear was verified—she had lured him on to his ruin. He was a ruined man; he had lost all that he valued—the esteem of his fellows, the comforts and luxuries of life. Then began again the odious and monotonous enumeration of the sacrifices he had made.

Why did Urith remind him of that ride? Did she want to find occasion to reproach him? Was it not enough that he was scourging himself with the whips of his own thoughts for his precipitate folly in marrying her?

But Urith was not at that moment thinking of reproach. She breathed moor air, was beyond hedges and enclosures, in the open, vast, uncultivated heather-land, and there her brain had cooled, and her heart had recovered composure. The atmosphere was other than that of a ball-room, which had filled her with intoxication, and had bred phantoms that had affrighted her.

As he rode on, with the light of the rising moon on his face, Anthony felt the pressure of Urith's hand below his heart. The pressure was slight, and yet it weighed heavy on him, and interfered with his breathing; that light hand, as it rose and fell with the motion of the horse, and at each inhalation, seemed to strike reproachfully against his side, to knock, and bid him open to better thoughts.

How was it that he was so changed—that he, who had forced himself on the reluctant Urith, had not let her alone till she had yielded to his persistency to precipitate the marriage—that he should be trying to shift the blame on her? If he had made sacrifices to win her, she had not invited him to do so; he had done it with his eyes open—he had done it moved by no other influence, urged by his own caprice solely.

It had never occurred to him that Urith had made sacrifices on her part; that he had demanded them of her, and given her no rest till they were made. He had made her marry him against her conscience and wishes, too quickly after her mother's death, and against her mother's dying orders. But he considered that what was done could not be undone, that as he had made his bed, so must he lie, as he had laden himself, so he must trudge. What then was the use of repining, and fretting over the past?

"Yet—it was the Lyke Way," he said, in a low tone, "the way of death, on which we set our feet together."

"No," she said, "not altogether." She released her hand from his heart, and placed it on the arm that held the bridle. "Stay the mare a moment, Tonie."

"Why?"

"I have something to tell you."

"Can you not say it as we ride on—it is late?"

"No—stay the mare."

He drew rein.

"Well—what is it?" he asked, a little impatiently.

She looked round.

"We are quite alone?"

"Yes—of course—who else could be here?"

Then she put her hand on his shoulder. "Turn your ear to me, Tonie. I will not say it aloud."

He did as required. But she did not speak for a few moments.

He showed signs of impatience.

Then she gathered resolution, and whispered something into his ear; only a word or two, but he started, and turned in his saddle.

"What! Urith—is it true?"

"I must not ride with you more after to-night," she said, and her eyes fell.

Then he put his arm round her, and drew her to him, and kissed her on one cheek, then on the other, then on her mouth, and laughed aloud.

"Hold tight!" he said. "Put both arms round me, both hands on my heart! O Urith! Urith! What will my father say when he knows this? He will relent. He must."