“Surely you have learned to love it somewhat in your wanderings?” said the older man with trusting nobleness, standing looking at it, his hand on the other’s arm.  “You could not help it.”

“No, I could not help it,” answered Osmonde, and to himself he said, “He will drive me mad, generous soul; he will drive me mad.”

His one hope and effort was so to bear himself that the unhappy truth should not be suspected, and so well he played his part that he made it harder for himself to endure.  It was not only that he had not betrayed himself either in the past or present by word or deed, but that he had been able to so control himself at worst that he had met his kinsman’s eye with a clear glance, and chosen such words of response and sympathy, when circumstances so demanded of him, as were generous and gracious and unconcerned.

“There has risen no faintest shadow in his mind,” was his thought.  “He loves me, he trusts me, he believes I share his happiness.  Heaven give me strength.”

But there was a time when it was scarce to be avoided that they should be bidden as guests to Camylott, inasmuch as at this splendid and renowned house my Lord of Dunstanwolde had spent some of his happiest hours, and loved it dearly, never ceasing to speak of its stateliness and beauty to his lady.

“It is the loveliest house in England, my lady,” he would say, “and Gerald loves it with his whole soul.  I think he loves it as well, and almost in such manner as he will some day love her who is his Duchess.  Know you that he and I walked together in the noted Long Gallery, on the day I told him the story of your birth?”

My lady turned with sudden involuntary movement and met my lord Duke’s eyes (curiously seldom their eyes met, as curiously seldom as if each pair avoided the other).  Some strange emotion was in her countenance and rich colour mounted her cheek.

“How was that, my lord?” she asked. “’Twas a strange story, as I have heard it—­and a sad one.”

“He was but fourteen,” said Dunstanwolde, “yet its cruelty set his youthful blood on fire.  Never shall I forget how his eyes flashed and he bit his boyish lip, crying out against the hardness of it.  ’Is there justice,’ he said, ’that a human thing can be cast into the world and so left alone?’”

“Your Grace spoke so,” said her ladyship to Osmonde, “while you were yet so young?” and the velvet of her eyes seemed to grow darker.

“It was a bitter thing,” said Osmonde.  “There was no justice in it.”

“Nay, that there was not,” my lady said, very low.

“’Twas ordained that you two should be kinsman and kinswoman,” said Dunstanwolde.  “He was moved by stories of your house when he was yet a child, and he was ever anxious to hear of your ladyship’s first years, and later, when I longed for a confidant, though he knew it not, I talked to him often, feeling that he alone of all I knew could understand you.”