“Starling’s an old friend, Honora.  He’s been here ever since I can remember.”

The blue eyes of the old servant were fixed on her with a strange, searching expression.  Was it compassion she read in them, on this that should be the happiest of her days?  In that instant, unaccountably, her heart went out to the old man; and something of what he had seen, and something of what was even now passing within him, came to her intuitively.  It was as though, unexpectedly, she had found a friend—­and a friend who had had no previous intentions of friendship.

“I’m sure I wish you happiness, madame,—­and Mr. Hugh, he said in a voice not altogether firm.

“Happiness!” cried Hugh.  “I’ve never known what it was before now, Starling.”

The old man’s eyes glistened.

“And you’ve come to stay, sir?”

“All my life, Starling,” said Hugh.

They entered the hall.  It was wide and cool, white panelled to the ceiling, with a dark oak floor.  At the back of it was an eighteenth-century stairway, with a band of red carpet running up the steps, and a wrought-iron guard with a velvet-covered rail.  Halfway up, the stairway divided at a landing, lighted by great triple windows of small panes.

“You may have breakfast in half an hour, Starling,” said Chiltern, and led Honora up the stairs into the east wing, where he flung open one of the high mahogany doors on the south side.  “These are your rooms, Honora.  I have had Keller do them all over for you, and I hope you’ll like them.  If you don’t, we’ll change them again.”

Her answer was an exclamation of delight.  There was a bedroom in pink, with brocaded satin on the walls, and an oriel window thrust out over the garden; a panelled boudoir at the corner of the house, with a marble mantel before which one of Marie Antoinette’s duchesses had warmed her feet; and shelves lined with gold-lettered books.  From its windows, across the flowering shrubbery and through the trees, she saw the gleaming waters of a lake, and the hills beyond.  From this view she turned, and caught her breath, and threw her arms about her husband’s neck.  He was astonished to see that her eyes were filled with tears.

“Oh, Hugh,” she cried, “it’s too perfect!  It almost makes me afraid.”

“We will be very happy, dearest,” he said, and as he kissed her he laughed at the fates.

“I hope so—­I pray so,” she said, as she clung to him.  “But—­don’t laugh,—­I can’t bear it.”

He patted her cheek.

“What a strange little girl you are!” he said.  “I suppose I shouldn’t be mad about you if you weren’t that way.  Sometimes I wonder how many women I have married.”

She smiled at him through her tears.

“Isn’t that polygamy, Hugh?” she asked.

It was all like a breathless tale out of one of the wonder books of youth.  So, at least, it seemed to Honora as she stood, refreshed with a new white linen gown, hesitating on the threshold of her door before descending.  Some time the bell must ring, or the cock crow, or the fairy beckon with a wand, and she would have to go back.  Back where?  She did not know—­she could not remember.  Cinderella dreaming by the embers, perhaps.