“Hugh,” she said slowly, “I hope that I shall be a help, and not—­not a hindrance.”

“A hindrance!” he exclaimed.  “You don’t know, you can’t realize, what you are to me.”

She was silent, and when she lifted her eyes it was to rest them on the portrait of his mother.  And she seemed to read in the sweet, sad eyes a question—­a question not to be put into words.  Chiltern, following her gaze, did not speak:  for a space they looked at the portrait together, and in silence . . . .

From one end of the house to the other they went, Hugh reviving at the sight of familiar objects a hundred memories of his childhood; and she trying to imagine that childhood, so different from her own, passed in this wonderful place.  In the glass cases of the gun room, among the shining, blue barrels which he had used in all parts of the world, was the little shotgun his father had had made for him when he was twelve years old.  Hugh locked the door after them when they came out, and smiled as he put the key in his pocket.

“My destroying days are over,” he declared.

Honora put on a linen hat and they took the gravelled path to the stables, where the horses, one by one, were brought out into the courtyard for their inspection.  In anticipation of this hour there was a blood bay for Honora, which Chiltern had bought in New York.  She gave a little cry of delight when she saw the horse shining in the sunlight, his nostrils in the air, his brown eyes clear, his tapering neck patterned with veins.  And then there was the dairy, with the fawn-coloured cows and calves; and the hillside pastures that ran down to the river, and the farm lands where the stubbled grain was yellowing.  They came back by the path that wound through the trees and shrubbery bordering the lake to the walled garden, ablaze in the mellow sunlight with reds and purples, salvias and zinnias, dahlias, gladioli, and asters.

Here he left her for a while, sitting dreamily on the stone bench.  Mrs. Hugh Chiltern, of Grenoble!  Over and over she repeated that name to herself, and it refused somehow to merge with her identity.  Yet was she mistress of this fair domain; of that house which had sheltered them race for a century, and the lines of which her eye caressed with a loving reverence; and the Chiltern pearls even then lay hidden around her throat.

Her thoughts went back, at this, to the gentle lady to whom they had belonged, and whose look began again to haunt her.  Honora’s superstition startled her.  What did it mean, that look?  She tried to recall where she had seen it before, and suddenly remembered that the eyes of the old butler had held something not unlike it.  Compassionate—­this was the only word that would describe it.  No, it had not proclaimed her an intruder, though it may have been ready to do so the moment before her appearance; for there was a note of surprise in it—­surprise and compassion.