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know, and I'll promise you afore we part, Miss Compton, I'll not go a-larking no more. I'll try, as sure as death I'll try, to stay more at home, though a great empty house, and a man brought home like a log or a bull of Bashan ain't much of an inducement to keep house, which I weren't used to, and didn't pretend to; and he knowed it before he married me. But I'll not provoke him more than I can help, and maybe he'll grow steadier with the summer, and the fishing, and the shooting season all coming on.'

'I hope it with all my heart,' said Iris fervently; but she stopped short at the same time, and stood with her fine little head held up. 'If I go with you, Lady Thwaite, you shan't steal into your husband's house, by a back door or an open window, like a thief or a dog. You'll go in by the principal entrance and the hall, in the most open way; and you'll walk straight to Sir William if he is at home. I shall be at your elbow to bear you out in your tale, or to speak for you, if you won't or can't do it for yourself. It is not much you will have to say. "I went out on a foolish frolic because I was very unhappy, too unhappy to know well what I was about;

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but I soon found how silly and wrong I had been. I have come back at once to tell you all about it, if you will listen to me, and to ask you to pardon me, for we all need pardon, erring as we do every hour of our lives.' Surely that is not very hard to say?'

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Honor bit her lips, and plucked at the buttons on her coat, but she made no further opposition.

The strange couple walked quickly in the direction of Whitehills. They were fortunate in meeting few wayfarers; none recognised Lady Thwaite in her masquerade. Of those who guessed Iris's identity nobody was disengaged or sharp enough to think it odd that Miss Compton should walk with a groom behind her. For Honor fell a pace or two back when the first two-legged animal came in sight, and determinedly kept the second rank till the women reached their destination.

CHAPTER XXV.

BEAUTY AT THE FEET OF THE BEAST.

It was in such circumstances that Iris entered the great gates of Whitehills again. She was under too severe a strain, too far carried out of herself, to notice, as Colonel Bell and his companions had been quick to observe, the change the gradual but sure growth of dilapidation, of indifference and neglect, which would soon amount to declared war against every manifestation of the orderly and beautiful. In the whole history of Whitehills, stretching back to the Norman invasions, a more apparently ill-matched pair never drew near the manor-house-the slender gentlewoman with the child-like, flower-like face, in her quiet grey serge walking-dress, the vision of whom, including her perfect womanly kindness, had once burst like a revelation on Sir William, and the groom, who looked so odd

and incongruous from the moment he drew back and drooped his head with something of a hang-dog air.

The hall-door stood open; Iris went in, and paused for her companion to take the lead.

'You must show the way in your own. house, Lady Thwaite.'

Thus spurred on, however gently, Honor started forward with a muttered, 'As I'm in for it, the sooner it's over the better.' She made a dash through a side passage and turned the handle of a closed door. It was that of the comfortless, unhomely room which she had made the livingroom of herself and her husband.

Iris had no time or power to make comparisons. Yet she received a general impression of the shabbiness and sluttishness of the room, contrasted as it was in the background of her imagination with the spacious width and old gentle breeding of the entrance hall, the library, and the drawing-room with its broad and deep lights and shadows, its Sir Joshuas, its Flemish carved chimney-piece.

Sir William was sitting lolling and smoking over the unremoved relics of a meal which

had been breakfast and dinner in one. His features were swollen and blurred, his fine eyes like burnt-out fires; yet he did not look so much bloated as ghastly with the fierce pursuit of fiery oblivion and an untimely end. He stared in a puzzled, stupid way at the semblance of Bill Rogers, who was not Bill, but who else he was Sir William could not at the moment tell. And when he looked past the groom and recognised Iris Compton standing there, he started to his feet, pulled the pipe from his mouth and stared wildly, with a recoil like that of a man who sees a visitant from another world and cannot bear the unnatural contact, but is ready to cry as of old, Depart from me, for I am a sinful man.'

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Then Iris spoke for Lady Thwaite almost word for word as the girl had dictated, except that she had to say one sentence on her own behalf, to account for her

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presence there: 'I have come with Lady Thwaite, Sir William I trust you will forgive the intrusion;' as she spoke she caught Honor again by the sleeve, and letting her hand slip down, clasped in her slim white fingers the brown fist already clenched in swelling mortification and rising wrath.

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