The days which followed were very wonderful ones to Ann. She had come through darkness into light, out of infinite pain into infinite joy, and perhaps the very fact that in giving herself to Eliot she had forgiven much—forgiven what many women would have found it impossible to forgive—added something precious, some sacramental spikenard, to the gift which flowed back to the giver, deepening the profound sense of peace and happiness which encompassed her.

Eliot had known how to accept her gift—had taken it with simple thankfulness and a wondering reverence for the shining ways along which a woman’s love can lead her, and the hour which they had passed together after Ann had bidden him stay had been, in a sense, sacred—a mutual revelation to each of them of the secret depths in the other’s nature. But afterwards, once that wonderful hour was past, Eliot strode masterfully back into his man’s kingdom. He was not of the type to remain a penitent, on his knees indefinitely. Nor would Ann have had it otherwise. She would have hated a subservient lover.

Eliot was very far from being subservient. Almost before the neighbourhood’s congratulations had ceased to rain about them both he was demanding that Ann should fix the date of their wedding.

“You impatient man!” she teased him. “Why, we’re only just this minute engaged! We shan’t be married for ages and ages yet.”

“Oh, shan’t we?” he retorted. “We’ll be married in May, sweetheart. That’s exactly as long as I’ll consent to wait. And I’m only agreeing to that because a woman always seems to think it’s part of the ceremony to buy a quantity of clothes when she’s married—just as though she couldn’t buy them afterwards quite as well as before!”

“In May? Oh, no, Eliot.” Ann shook her head with decision. “That’s the unlucky month for marriages.”

“You don’t mean to say you’re superstitious?”

“I don’t know.” She spoke uncertainly. “But—we’ve had so much ill-luck. I don’t think I want to tempt Providence by getting married in May.”

He shouted with laughter.

“Very well, you absurd baby, it shan’t be May,” he conceded, adding cheerfully: “We’ll fix it for April then.”

“No, no. That’s too soon,” she protested hastily. “Let’s decide on—June.”

“April,” he repeated firmly.

“June”—with an effort to be equally firm.

“If you say that again,” he returned coolly, “I shall make it March. I’d ever so much rather, too,” he wound up boyishly.

“That would be quite impossible,” replied Ann triumphantly. “I’ve promised to go and stay with the Brabazons in March.”

He took her by the shoulders and pulled her towards him.

“Let it be April, then,” he said, adding quickly, as he read dissent in her eyes: “We’ve wasted such a lot of time, beloved.”

She yielded at that.

“Very well, then—April. But I’m afraid you’re going to be a dreadfully self-willed husband, Eliot”—smiling as though the prospect were in no way distasteful.

“I think I am,” he acknowledged, with all a man’s supreme egotism. He laughed down at her, and, lifting her right off the ground into his arms, kissed her with swift passion.

“You’re much too thin,” he grumbled discontentedly, as he set her down again. “You weigh next to nothing.”

“And whose fault is that, pray?” she asked gaily.

She was horrified to see his face darken with sudden pain.

“Don’t,” he said abruptly, in a stifled voice.

“Oh, my dear—” She was back in his arms in an instant, soothing, comforting, and scolding him all in a breath. “You needn’t worry over my boniness,” she assured him cheerfully. “When we’re married and settled down and I’ve no worries, I expect I shall get appallingly plump and have to take to one of those anti-fat cures.”

“You—fat!” He laughed. “There’s about as much danger of that as of Mrs. Carberry becoming a philanthropist.”

Eliot had been furiously angry when he heard of the gossip which had gathered for a time around Ann’s name and of the part Mrs. Carberry had played in helping to disseminate it, but neither he nor Ann herself had been able to refrain from laughing at the complete volte-face which that excellent lady performed when the announcement of their engagement was made public. She had been one of the first to offer her felicitations, and had paid a special call at the Cottage—this time accompanied by the modest Muriel—to offer them in person. “It will be so delightful to have a chatelaine at Heronsmere at last,” she had gushed. Presumably, recognising that her daughter’s chance of acquiring the coveted position was now reduced, to nil, she had decided—with the promptness of a good general—to accept the fact and adapt her tactics to the altered situation. With mathematical foresight she argued that when Coventry was married Heronsmere would undoubtedly become the centre of a considerable amount of entertaining, and from every point of view it would therefore be wise to be on friendly terms there. After all, there were as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it, and the prospective hospitality which she anticipated would emanate from Heronsmere in the near future should provide excellent opportunities for fishing.

Apart from Mrs. Carberry, everybody seemed genuinely delighted at the engagement—even Miss Caroline. She confusedly mingled regrets “for any misunderstanding” with her congratulations, and Ann, too happy herself to wish any one else to be unhappy, forgave her whole-heartedly. Lady Susan was overflowingly pleased.

“Though, of course,” as she characteristically informed Sir Philip just before he and Tony returned to London, “Eliot’s been blessed far beyond his deserts—like most men. Anyhow, Philip, you may as well make up your mind to accept Doreen as a pis otter for Tony—and do it gracefully, my dear man! Mark my words, marriage will be the making of the boy. Every man ought to be married.”

“I wish you’d held that opinion thirty years ago, Susan,” retorted Sir Philip. “I suppose”—he hesitated, his eyes curiously soft—“it’s too late in the day now?”

“Much too late,” replied Lady Susan promptly, though her eyes, too, were unwontedly soft. “Besides, I could never bear to be parted from the Tribes of Israel—and you know you can’t stand a dog about the house.”

“Drat the man!” she muttered crossly to herself, as the train bearing the Brabazons Londonwards steamed out of the station. She brushed her hand across her eyes as she hopped briskly into the car which had brought them to the station, giving the chauffeur the order “Home!” in a sharper voice than she usually employed towards her servants. “Drat the man! It looks as though a single engagement has demoralised the lot of us.”

It was certainly destined to be followed by far-reaching consequences as regards two, at least, of the other people in the neighbourhood. Robin’s notice to give up his post as Eliot’s agent had, of course, been suitably buried, a brief understanding handshake between the two men its only tombstone, and Robin had gone straight from his interview with Eliot to the Priory. He found Cara, surrounded by a small army of vases, arranging flowers, of which a great sheaf, freshly sent in by the gardener from the hot-houses, lay on the table.

“Aren’t they lovely?” she said, when she and Robin had exchanged greetings. “Do you want a buttonhole?”

He looked at the deep-red carnation which she held out to him and shook his head.

“No, thank you,” he said politely. “I want a wife.”

Cara gasped a little.

“Robin!” she exclaimed faintly.

A lovely colour flooded her face. It had been a much happier face latterly—since Ann’s engagement. The look of settled sadness had gone out of her eyes. She felt now—now that everything was made straight betwixt Ann and Eliot—as though the heavy burden she had carried all these years had been suddenly loosed from her shoulders. Eliot had found happiness, at last, and that terrible sense of responsibility for his maimed and broken life was taken from her. Of the existence of the grey shadow she could not know, or guess.

So she turned to Robin with a sweet hesitancy that brought him swiftly to her side.

“Cara!” he said eagerly. “Cara, are you going to give me that ‘second-best,’ after all?”

Still she hesitated.

“It doesn’t seem fair, Robin,” she faltered. “I’m older than you are, for one thing.”

“One year—or two, is it?” he mocked joyfully.

“Half a century, I think!”—with a quick sigh.

“You’ll grow younger,” he suggested optimistically. “And anyway, can you bear to think of me living all alone at the Cottage after Ann is married? I should probably commit suicide.”

Cara stood twisting a spray of maidenhair fern round and round her fingers till the tiny pale green leaves shrivelled up and dropped off and only the wiry stem remained.

“When is—Ann going to be married?” she asked slowly, at last.

“In April. It’s all fixed. But the thing that matters is when are we going to be married?”

April! Eliot was to be married in April! Cara was conscious of a muffled stab of pain. But she felt no active rebellion. With a wistful sense of resignation she recognised that his life and hers were separate and apart. She herself had sundered them more than ten years ago. But now, at last, Eliot had won through to happiness! She thanked God for that. And there was still something she could give Robin in return for his eager worship—good comradeship, and that second love which, though it bears but a faint semblance to the rushing ecstasy of young, passionate, first love, yet holds, perhaps, a deeper, more selfless tenderness and understanding.

She turned to the man waiting so eagerly for her answer.

“Are you quite sure you want me, Robin?” she asked.

“Quite sure,” he answered gravely.

“Then, if you’re really sure, I’ll marry you whenever you like—after Ann is married.”

He kissed her with a deep, grave passion, holding her closely in his arms.

“You shall forget the past, dearest—I promise you, you shall forget all the things that hurt you,” he said with tender reassurance. Presently, when the first few minutes were passed, he smiled down at her, a gleam of mirth in his eyes.

“I shall see to it that Ann and Eliot don’t postpone their wedding—if it means postponing ours! You said ‘after,’ you know.”

She nodded.

“Yes. I can’t possibly commandeer Ann’s natural protector”—smiling—“until she’s safely bestowed in some one else’s care.”

But though she jested about the stipulation she had made, it was the outcome of a curiously definite idea. Since it was through her that Eliot’s happiness had once been wrecked, she felt as though, until this new-found happiness which had come to him were assured—secure beyond any shadow of doubt—she was not free to take her own. It was in a sense an expiation, a pathetic little human effort to propitiate fate and turn aside any blow; aimed at Eliot’s happiness by those jealous gods who exact payment to the very last farthing.

Ann was overjoyed when she heard of Robin’s engagement. To know that her adored brother would not be left lonely by her marriage, and to see Cara, whose former experience of matrimony had proved such a ghastly failure, with a new, brooding gladness in her eyes, added the last drop to her cup of happiness.

“Dear Robin, I’m so pleased!” she told him. “If I’d been choosing a wife for you myself I couldn’t have chosen any one nicer than Cara!”

“Glad you’re pleased,” Robin returned gruffly—the gruffness being merely the cloak to conceal his own riotous felicity which every Englishman in similar circumstances thinks it necessary to assume. But Ann saw through it, and was not to be deterred from frank rejoicing.

“It will be perfectly lovely to have my best friend married to my best brother,” she continued. “Where shall you live? At the Priory or the Cottage?”

“We haven’t got as far as making such world-shaking decisions as that,” he grinned. “Perhaps we might live at the Priory and week-end at the Cottage”—whimsically.

Ann found a further cause for rejoicing in the continued absence of Brett Forrester. She had never seen him again since the morning when, with an intense feeling of relief, she had watched the Sphinx steam out from Silverquay harbour. Lady Susan was much too incensed against him to invite him to White Windows, and Ann rested fairly secure in the hope that she would never see him again, or, at least, not until she was Eliot’s wife. After that, she felt she would not be afraid to meet him. He could work her no more harm then.

So that it was with a light Heart that she finally started on her journey to London to stay with the Brabazons. Eliot saw her off at the station.

“If you stop a day longer than a fortnight I shall come and fetch you back,” he informed her despotically. “I’m not going to spare my girl to any one for more than two weeks. And I grudge even that.”

And Ann, leaning out of the carriage window and waving her hand to the tall, beloved figure on the platform, felt no premonition, was conscious of no ominous foreboding that the train which was bearing her so swiftly away from him was actually carrying her straight towards the very danger from which she felt so sure she had escaped.

In the patch of brilliant sunshine which lay all about her, the grey shadow had paled until it had become almost imperceptible. But it was still there—only waiting for the sun to move a little in the heavens to fling itself blackly across her path once more.