Chapter 29

At the Cow at Wichben

The happiness he had dreamed of was given to him; nay, he knew joy and
tenderness even more high and sweet than his fancy had painted. As
Camylott had been in his childhood so he saw it again--the most
beauteous home in England and the happiest, its mistress the fairest
woman and the most nobly loving. As his own father and mother had found
life a joyful thing and their world full of warm hearts and faithful
friends, so he and she he loved, found it together. The great house was
filled once more with guests and pleasures as in the olden time, the
stately apartments were thrown open for entertainment, gay cavalcades
came and went from town, the forests were hunted, the moors shot over
by sportsmen, and the lady who was hostess and chatelaine won renown as
well as hearts, since each party of guests she entertained went back to
the homes they came from, proclaiming to all her wit and gracious
charm.

She rode to hunt and leapt hedges as she had done when she had been Clo
Wildairs; she walked the moors with the sportsmen, her gun over her
shoulder, she sparkling and showing her white teeth like a laughing
gipsy; and when she so walked, the black rings of her hair blown loose
about her brow, her cheeks kissed fresh crimson by the wet wind, and
turned her eyes upon my lord Duke near her and their looks met, the man
who beheld saw lovers who set his own heart beating.

"But is it true," asked once the great French lady who had related the
history of the breaking of the horse, Devil, "is it true that a poor
man killed himself in despair on her last marriage, and that she lives
a secret life of penance to atone--and wears a hair shirt, and peas in
her beautiful satin shoes, and does deeds of mercy in the dark places
of the big black English city?"

"A man, mad with jealous rage of her, disappeared from sight," said an
English lady present. "And he might well have drowned himself from
disappointment that she would not wed him and pay his debts; but 'twas
more like he fled England to escape his creditors. And 'tis true she
does many noble deeds in secret; but if they be done in penance for Sir
John Oxon, she is a lady with a conscience that is tender indeed."

That her conscience was a strangely tender thing was a thought which
moved one man's heart strongly many a time. Scarce a day passed in
which her husband did not mark some evidence of this--hear some word
spoken, see some deed done, almost, it seemed, as if in atonement for
imagined faults hid in her heart. He did not remark this because he was
unused to womanly mercifulness; his own mother's life had been full of
gentle kindness to all about her, of acts of charity and goodness, but