of the future and the incidents which would lead him to them.  At night, sometimes in long rides or walks he took alone, he lived these incidents through and imagined he beheld her as she would look when they first met, as she would look when he told her his purpose in coming to her.  If he pleased her, his fancy pictured him the warm flash of her large eye, the smile of her mouth, half-proud, half-tender, a look which even when but imagined made his pulses beat.

“I do not know her face well enough,” he said, “to picture all the beauteous changes of it, but there will sure be a thousand which a man might spend a life of love in studying.”

Among the many who passed hours in his company at this time, there was but one who guessed, even distantly, at what lay at the root of his being, and this was the man who, being in a measure of like nature with his own, had been in the same way possessed when deep passion came to him.

At this period his Grace of Marlborough already felt the tossings of the rising storm in England, and the emotions which his Duchess’s letters aroused within him, her anger at the intrigues about her, her tigress love for and belief in him, her determination to defend and uphold him with all the powers of her life and strength and imperial spirit, were, it is probable, moving and stimulating things which put him in the mood to be keen of sight and sympathy.

“There dwells some constant thought in your mind, my lord Duke,” he said, on a night in which they sate together alone.  “Is it a new one?”

“No,” Osmonde answered; “’twould perhaps not be so constant if it were.  It is an old thought which has taken a new form.  In times past”—­his voice involuntarily falling a tone—­“I did not realise its presence.”

The short silence which fell was broken by the Duke and with some suddenness.

“Is it one of which you would rid yourself?” he asked.

“No, your Grace.”

“Tis well,” gravely, “You could not—­if you would.”

He asked no further question, but went on as if in deep thought, rather reflecting aloud.

“There are times,” he said, “when to some it is easy and natural to say that such fevers are folly and unreasonableness—­but even to those so slightly built by nature, and of memories so poor, such times do not come, nor can be dreamed of, when they are passing through the furnace fires.  They come after—­or before.”

Osmonde did not speak.  He raised his eyes and met those of his illustrious companion squarely, and for a short space each looked into the soul of the other, it so seemed, though not a word was spoke.

“You did not say the thing before,” the Duke commented at last.  “You will not say it after.”

“No, I shall not,” answered Osmonde, and somewhat later he added, with flushed cheek, “I thank your Grace for your comprehension of an unspoken thing.”