In the general chorus of congratulation that welcomed our engagement I must include a letter I received from my erstwhile rival, Reggie. We had found time during his vacations to become fast friends, and he wrote to me from my old rooms in Trinity, where, by some strange freak of fortune, he was now installed.

“Dear Stirling,

“I congratulate you heartily on your engagement to Marion, and think you lucky beyond the majority of mankind. If I hadn’t been her cousin, and much too infantine in years, I would have done my level best to supplant you. Peggy, I fancy, would have co-operated with me, as I am sure she believes even now that, if you had only gone the way of the other curates and left me a fair field, I should have won easily in a canter.

“Not only do I congratulate you, but I also send you a wedding-present, which is unlike ordinary presents of the kind in that it will be valuable to you while it will cost me nothing. In fact, I am only presenting to you what is already your own property. The picture which I forward herewith was found in the cupboard of your gyp-room. If age is valuable as well as venerable, there is little doubt that I have been happy in the choice of my wedding-present.

“You will forgive me, I hope, for my unseasonable jocularity. It is intended to comfort your heart by proving to you that my youthful affections have not been so seriously blighted as at one time you had cause to imagine.

“Yours, without envy or uncharitableness,

“Reggie.”

“The young rascal,” I muttered. “He must have known all the time—perhaps his sisters told him—that I had been a witness of his youthful escapade. Well, the lad’s got a sense of humour in him at any rate. But I wonder what picture he means? Oh, no doubt it’s the one that’s been in our family for a hundred years at least. My grandfather, I think it was, brought it from Spain, and thought a lot of it too; though why and wherefore, passes my comprehension. But it’s certainly old and dirty enough, as Reggie says, to be valuable. I was always intending to have it re-framed and always forgot it.”

When the picture arrived a day later, the first thing I did was to carry out my intention of having it cleaned and re-framed. We had always supposed it to be the portrait of some cardinal, a faint glow of red being the only colour that had power in it to pierce the dirt of ages.

But now at last was revealed a face of marvellous beauty, and (strange to say) of a pronounced English type. The pale refined features and sunny hair resembled nothing that one encounters among the native types of Italy and Spain.

I should have put him down from his dress as an acolyte or choir boy, or, it might be, some cardinal’s page. But who he was, or how he found himself in Spain, or why he should have clothed himself from head to foot in scarlet, even to his very cap, it was beyond my power to fathom. It was a remarkable coincidence, too, that he much reminded me of a famous portrait by Bronzino that had taken my fancy at Madrid, in connection with which I had been met years before by the self-same difficulty, when the official catalogue, so far as I remembered, had been equally incompetent to solve it.

It was a mystery, furthermore, how my grandfather could have secured so good a copy. For the possession of the finest gallery in the world has never tempted the Spaniard of to-day to cultivate art, nor has he established in his capital city a community of copyists like that which flourishes at Rome. With such fine traditions of painting to his credit, he is therewith content, and a copy of real excellence, which this undoubtedly was, would, I felt sure, be wholly beyond the range of his capacity.

With the difficulties of the picture still unsolved, I dismissed it from my thoughts, merely telling Peggy to hang it in my sitting-room, where it would find itself in congenial harmony with Eric’s Antinous. Peggy, I could see, resented its introduction altogether, as savouring of Papistry and the Scarlet Woman, and would have preferred to turn it with its face to the wall; only I declined to consider her feelings. “I wonder what Eric would say of the picture? I’ll ask him some day,” I said to Marion, who was in raptures over the delicate beauty of the portrait.

My happiness during all this period, but for my anxiety about Riverdale, would have been whole and unalloyed. No one was more surprised than myself to find how many friends I had made during my short residence at Fleetwater. Peggy was the only one who held aloof and was chary of congratulation.

Naturally the Rectory girls were wild with delight. Hardly had they recovered their equanimity after the excitement of Gertie’s birthday, when, lo and behold, they foresaw in the near distance a vision of other and greater festivities that promised to outrival even the ceremonial on Chapel Hill.

From the first the Rector had shown himself a warm friend, and whenever I was free of my duties in the parish, the chances were you would have found me in his company, either helping him to keep down the trout in the Rectory stream, or taking lessons from him in gardening, whereat Marion and I formed the students of his class.

“No arrangement—none, Stirling,” he said, “could have been more in accordance with my plans for the future. So soon as I am too old for work—and I’ve had a twinge or two of gout already—you and Marion will come to the Rectory, while I retire to a little property lower down the river, where I’ll catch all the trout that you allow to escape you in their travels past the garden. You know, of course, that the Park and Manor House are strictly entailed, and will go to a distant cousin. So, for the present, I shall consider that I only hold the living in keeping for you.”

Information privately received from Marion had left me in no fear concerning the result of my proposed interview with the Squire. From the first he had shown a warm liking for me—all the warmer, perhaps, because I was staunch, from his point of view, on the question of fox-hunting; thinking, as I honestly did, that the Rector was hardly so fair as usual in his denunciation of the sport.

I was to dine alone with him that evening, and when Marion had left us to our wine he came at once to the subject. “I am perfectly satisfied, Stirling,” he said, “with Marion’s choice. Personally I have a strong liking for you, and have no ambition whatever that she should make what is called a great marriage. Though I honestly confess I am somewhat disappointed that she has thrown over Riverdale, who I am sure is devoted to her, and would infallibly have proposed later on. Indeed, it’s been a puzzle to me and to all of us why he’s held back so long. However, all this is none of our business. I would never prejudice a girl’s inclination by so much as a word. But, to speak candidly, I could not have given her to you or to any man who had not a small fortune of his own to start with. And this, not so much for her sake—she will have enough and to spare—as her husband’s. There is nothing that places a man in a more false situation than the fact of his being entirely dependent on his wife’s property. Indeed, no man of any spirit would accept the position.

“There is only one thing more, and then I will dismiss you to join Marion in the drawing-room. To make your income secure, I would suggest to you—simply as a friend—that you remove the part of your capital which you have in the bank—these new concerns are none of them too safe—and place it in some good security that can be recognised by trustees. And now, for I know you are longing to join Marion, I’ll only say that I congratulate you on your success as heartily as I congratulate myself.”

In the drawing-room Marion sang to me my favourite songs, amongst them, of course, ‘The Message’ and ‘The Requital.’ Last of all I asked for ‘My Queen,’ the song which above all others realises the entire self-abandonment which is the very hall-mark of love. For a love that is true and worth the name will impose on itself no restrictions and no limitations, giving itself wholly and unreservedly, without asking the reason why and wherefore, to the object of its worship.

And then we wandered out through the gardens and the park down to the site of the monastery beyond, strolling in and out between the ruined walls and arches, while a nightingale, who night after night gave a concert to his mate at the same hour from the same tree, sang to us his own idea of love.

Not talking this time, either of us, as to the mysteries or pleasures of a world to come—too happy, I am afraid, with this one. And certainly dreaming nothing of a danger that was already drawing nearer and still nearer with the intent to wreck our happiness.