“Leans!” cried Mistress Anne with a kind of loving fright; “Anne—­on Anne!”

“Yes, yes,” he answered.  “I have seen it—­felt it!  Your pardon for my boldness.  You will never forget!”

And at that very moment his attention had been caught by the look on his kinsman’s face—­they chancing to be near his lordship; and he had seen him sway and fall in the midst of a terrified group, which uttered a low simultaneous cry.

After his attendance at the funeral ceremonies, which took place in Warwickshire, his Grace of Osmonde did not return at once to town, but went to Camylott that in the midst of the quiet loveliness he might be alone.

“I must have time to think,” he said; “to still my brain which whirls—­to teach it to understand.”

Oh! the heavenly stillness and beauty of the afternoon when he rode up the avenue on his home-coming!  His home-coming!  Yes, ’twas that he called it in his thought, and for the first time since his parents’ death it seemed so.  In the tenderness of his heart and for the sake of his long and true love for his dead kinsman, he scarce dared explain to himself why he now could use this word and could not before—­and yet, he felt that in the depths of his being the thought lay that at last he was coming home.

“God forgive me if there is lack of kindness in it,” he cried to himself.  “Kinsman, forgive me!  Nay, you know now and will have pity.  I am but man and young, and have so madly loved and been so tortured.  Now I may look into her eyes and do no wrong, but only great Love’s bidding.  My blood beats in my veins—­my heart leaps up so and will not be still.”

’Twas deep autumn and a day of gold—­the sunset burned and flamed and piled the sky with golden mountains such as had heaped upon each other on the evening he had stood with his mother at the Long Gallery window before their last parting; the trees’ branches were orange and amber and russet brown, the moors had gold hues on them, and on the terraces the late flowers blooming blazed crimson and yellow as if the summer had burned all paler and less sumptuous colour away.  The gables and turrets of the tower rose clear soft grey, or dark with ivy, against a sky of deepest blue, the broad tree-studded acres of the park rolled yellowing green to Camylott village, where white cottages nestled among orchards and fields of corn and were enfolded by wooded hills and rising moorland.  Occasional farm-yard sounds were to be heard mingled now and then with voices and laughter of children, rooks cawed in the high tree-tops with a lazy irregularity, and there was an autumn freshness in the ambient air.  In the courtyard the fountain played with a soft plashing, and as he rode in some little birds were chirping and fluttering as they drank and flirted the water with their wings.  The wide doors were thrown open, showing the beauteous huge hall with its pictures and warm colours, its armour and trophies of the chase; the servants stood waiting to receive him, and as the groom took his horse, Mr. Fox approached to greet him on the threshold.  Every face had kindly welcome in it, every object seemed to recall some memory which belonged to his happiest youth—­to those years when all had been so warm and fair.