‘It is certainly very hard.’

’Oh, so hard!  But for Eric’s sake I must be patient.  I saw the advertisement this morning in the Standard.  Lady Betty read it aloud to us at breakfast-time; but Giles took no notice.  I wished that we dared to tell Mr. Cunliffe about it; he might employ a detective:  but I am so afraid of Etta.’

‘I think we may safely wait a little,’ I returned.  ’I have faith in Joe Muggins:  a five-pound note may do our work without fear of publicity.’

’If you hear any news, if you can find out where he lives, remember that I must be the first to see him:  Giles shall be told, but not until I have spoken to Eric.’

‘Do you think that you will be able to persuade him to come home?’

‘I shall not try to persuade him,’ she returned proudly.  ’I know Eric too well for that.  Nothing will induce him to cross the threshold of Gladwyn until his innocence is established, until Giles has apologised for the slur he has thrown upon his character.’

‘I am afraid Mr. Hamilton will never do that.’

’Then there will be no possibility of reconciliation with Eric, Ursula.  If Eric does not come home, if things remain as they are, I have made up my mind to leave Giles’s roof.  I cannot any longer be separated from Eric:  if he be poor I will be poor too:  it will not hurt me to work; nothing will hurt me after the life I have been leading these three years.’  And the old troubled look came back to Gladys’s face.  Lady Betty joined us, and our talk ceased, and soon afterwards we went up into the turret-room to prepare for dinner.

After dinner Lady Betty proposed that we should go down the road a little to hear the nightingales; but Mr. Hamilton informed her with a smile that he had a nightingale on the premises, and, turning to me, he asked me if I were in the mood to give them all pleasure, and if I would sing to them until they told me to stop.

I was rather dubious on this latter point, for how could I know, I asked him, laughing, that they might not keep me singing until midnight?

‘You ought to have more faith in our humanity,’ he returned, with much solemnity, as he opened the piano.  Gladys crept into her old seat by me, but Mr. Hamilton placed himself in an easy-chair at some little distance.  As the room grew dusk, and the moonlight threw strange silvery gleams here and there, I could see him leaning back with his arms crossed under his head, and wondered if he were asleep, he was so still and motionless.

How I thanked God in my heart for that gift of song, a more precious gift to me than even beauty would have been!  As usual, I forgot everything, myself, Gladys, Mr. Hamilton; I seemed to sing with the joyousness of a bird that is only conscious of life and freedom and sunshine.

I would sing no melancholy songs that night,—­no love-sick adieux, no effusions of lachrymose sentimentality,—­only sweet old Scotch and English ballads, favourites of Charlie’s; then grander melodies, ’Let the bright seraphim,’ and ‘Waft her, angels, through the air.’  As I finished the last I was conscious that Mr. Hamilton was standing beside me; the next moment he laid his hand on mine.