Sir Marmaduke turned a stony stare upon his son.

"I don't believe it," he said at last. "Mordaunt was a dark, black-bearded man, and Mark is fair. The servants would have known him."

I am

"He was disguised. As far as I can make out he hardly ever came up to the house. Cora was the only one who had much communication with him. afraid it is only too true. I don't know if it will be any comfort to you to feel that it is a son, and not a stranger, who has been making such a mess of your affairs. It was cleverly planned and carried out. I told you he had to clear out at the Cape. He owed a lot of money and hadn't a penny in his pocket. He must have followed his wife home almost immediately, instead of going to Australia as he had formerly determined."

Sir Marmaduke could not speak, and then at last his father's heart seemed to overflow, and instead of indignation and fury against the son who had so wronged him, came the cry:

"Oh Mark, my son! I would have forgiven you and received you! A son and an outcast, what would your mother have said!"

A great sob rose in the old man's throat, and Duke slipped out of the room, for he felt his father would face this trouble best alone.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE PRINCE AND PRINCESS

Now with that look in your face,

With the sunlight aslant on your cheek,

Will you understand, while I hold your hand,

And, oh dearest maid, let me speak?

-Alice E. Gillington.

"GUESS who has been here, Olly?” said Osmond, when Olive returned with her little charge to the farm. "Duke," said Olive quietly.

"Right. He could not stay. He was disappointed not to see you. He looks very ill and worn, and so thin. He says he is very much tied to Sir Marmaduke at present or he would have been over before."

"Is he another strange gempleum?" demanded Ida. "Not strange to us, dear. He has been fighting out in Africa and got wounded. Did he tell you how he got wounded, Diogenes?"

He never talks much

"I declare I never asked him! of himself, and only touched on the horrors of the war." "I have just got a letter from Dot. I passed the post-office so called in, and they gave it to me. She wants me to go to dine with them next week."

Leaning against the window Olive took the letter out of her pocket.

"She mentions that Duke has decided for the present to take the agent's place, and look after his father's property himself. Did he tell you about it?"

"Yes."

"This is what she says: 'Father says that it will be years before the mischief done to the property can be remedied. Duke goes about with a kind of stolid determination in his face. I think he will leave no stone unturned till he gets everything in spick and span order again. He came over to dine with us the other night. I thought him much graver and sterner than he used to be. But I think he has gone through an awful time. Isn't it strange that Mark and he should be brothers!' Then she goes on to give me an account of some Blackenbury gaieties. I am afraid I must decline her invitation to dine."

"Wherefore?"

"I shall be very busy next week-Mr. and Mrs. Hunt return, and I shall have to hand over parish matters and render an account of my stewardship.' Dot always expects me to sleep the night and stay the greater part of the next day with her, so a dinner at the Manor means the best part of two days."

"When I go home again," remarked Ida at this juncture, "I mean to be a useful person, and Beautiful does too. We shall help father with his sermons and tell him what to say, and we shall tidy mother's writing drawer every day. We have done with wickedness forever and ever!"

Her small face was so solemn that Olive did not laugh, but she recognised the borrowed sentence.

"That is, I am afraid, impossible for us, Ida," she said. "Farmer Sparks said he had done with wickedness forever and ever, because he feels he is a dying man, waiting outside Heaven's gate to be let in."

"I hope God won't keep him long outside," said Ida, "he's too ill a man to be kept waiting."

Then, with a quick change of thought, she danced out of the room dragging Beautiful after her.

Olive fingered a bowl of daffodils on the window ledge lovingly; she looked into the garden which was full of her favourite golden flower, and a dreamy smile played about her lips. She had at first been very disappointed to have missed Duke.

"It seems as if fate is against me," she mused; “and yet it must be all right. I have waited too long to be impatient now."

Then, with a sigh and a smile, she left the room and went in search of Ida.

She was quietly happy these bright spring days; the shadows in her life seemed to have passed, and hope for the future was stealing into her heart with a subtle fragrance that was all the sweeter for its non-recognition.

Only two days after Duke's visit, on a sunny afternoon, as she was picking up a fallen spray of apple blossom in the orchard, a voice startled her.

"Good-afternoon. We are almost strangers."

She turned and confronted Duke.

"Yes," she said quietly, giving him her hand, "I was sorry to miss you when you came over."

"I am fortunate to-day."

"How is Sir Marmaduke?"

Wonderfully well; and much brighter than he has been for a long while."

They were commonplace remarks, but they served to quiet and steady the pulses that were hammering and

beating in both hearts. Olive stood with her back to a tree, the pink and white blossoms of which seemed to frame her slender figure in grey with a spring-like radiance and warmth. She was bareheaded, and the yellow sunshine touched with gold her soft brown hair. Daffodils were in her belt, and they took Duke back to that spring morning a year ago when he had spoken to her by the old stone bridge.

His eyes were on her now, but hers were away over the distant valley in front of her. She was not so ready of speech as she used to be, and there was an abrupt pause in their conversation. Duke felt nervous. He was convinced that this would be his last appeal, and the thought of being sent back to his lonely home without his heart's desire, made him chary of hastening such a possible fate in store for him.

"You have heard," he began rather lamely, "of all that has happened. It has been a terrible home-coming to me."

Some faint instinct prompted these words. He remembered the saying, "Pity is akin to love," and when she turned her eyes full upon him he caught his breath. "Yes, I have heard everything, and I have felt so sorry for you."

Then the hot blood rushed through his veins. Prudence was cast to the winds.

"Olive, I want 'you still."

Plain, honest words, but they were backed up with all the passionate love of a strong man's heart. She stood motionless for a moment, then made a step forward, and the softly-breathed words were only heard by his quick ear, as he took her into his arms: