“You heard? ... you saw just now? ...” she asked timidly, fearful of encountering his jealous wrath, that vehement temper of his which she had learned to dread.

Strangely enough he replied quite gently:  “Yes ...  I saw ... the young man loves you, my beautiful Suzanne! ... and he will hate me now ...”

He had always called her Suzanne—­and her name thus spoken by him, and with that quaint foreign intonation of his had always sounded infinitely sweet.

“But I love you with all my heart,” she said earnestly, tenderly, her whole soul—­young, ardent, full of romance, going out to him with all the strength of its purity and passion.  “What matter if all the world were against you?”

As a rule when they met thus on the confines of the wood, they would stand together by the gate, forming plans, talking of the future and of their love.  Then after a while they would stroll into the park, he escorting her, as far as he might approach the house without being seen.

She had no thought that Richard Lambert would be on the watch.  Nay! so wholly absorbed was she in her love for this man, once she was in his presence, that already—­womanlike—­she had forgotten the young student’s impassioned avowal, his jealousy, his very existence.

And she loved these evening strolls in the great, peaceful park, at evening, when the birds were silent in their nests, and the great shadows of ivy-covered elms enveloped her and her romance.  From afar a tiny light gleamed here and there in some of the windows of Acol Court.

She had hated the grim, bare house at first, so isolated in the midst of the forests of Thanet, so like the eyrie of a bird of prey.

But now she loved the whole place; the bit of ill-kept tangled garden, with its untidy lawn and weed-covered beds, in which a few standard rose-trees strove to find a permanent home; she loved the dark and mysterious park, the rusty gate, that wood with its rich carpet which varied as each season came around.

To-night her lover was more gentle than had been his wont of late.  They walked cautiously through the park, for the moon was brilliant and outlined every object with startling vividness.  The trees here were sparser.  Close by was the sunk fence and the tiny rustic bridge—­only a plank or two—­which spanned it.

Some thirty yards ahead of them they could see the dark figure of Richard Lambert walking towards the house.

“One more stroll beneath the trees, ma mie,” he said lightly, “you’ll not wish to encounter your ardent suitor again.”

She loved him in this brighter mood, when he had thrown from him that mantle of jealousy and mistrust which of late had sat on him so ill.