her father's mill-wheel, had lipped the bank of the Mill-House garden where Matt Scargil used to seek her after supper, four centuries ago! . . . And now! Matt Scargil contemned her, doubtless-loathed her as a sullied thing that had lain in gypsy arms. “Ah!” a flush came to her cheek, there was a proud lifting of the head, a flash of set teeth; was she not wed, was she not an honest woman? What mattered it what Matt Scargil might think? . . . Yet the knocking tears welled out.

The young breeze strengthened; it blew back the frill of her hood, it stirred her ruddy-brown hair; the grey cloak fluttered and fell aside, revealing a rounded form that even the high-waisted gown of woolsey could not disencharm. The breath of the

breeze had brought back the tint of wild-rose to her cheek; but the line that ran from ear to chin, in a curve of dainty fulness, hardened a little as she let her mind drift back upon the past.

Ah, those four years of wanderings! Cities she had seen, and famous lands, and much of all she had dreamed about in the dormitory at Derby school and in her maiden chamber she had known. Romance she had tasted; the flame of passionate love had lapped her, flaring up from a fire of straw; gypsy magic had wiled her; gypsy passion had held her; Aldo's thriftless hand had lavished luxury upon her a while. She had ladied it in the world, with fan and jewel and Indian shawl and feather; beaux, exquisite chattering

gallants, gay barons and counts had buzzed about her: some brilliant moments had been hers. Then poverty swooped, but that was bearable; then dread, less painful than the event; then shame, flight, sordid companionship, terror by night and by day, the lengthening, pursuing shadow of the gallows ever touching the fleeing heels. And here in Derbyshire she was back again, like a hare to its form, but houseless within reach of home!

She could bless heaven, now, that no child had leaped in her arms, that no tiny mouth had lipped her breast. How many a time in Rome had she breathed her Ave Maria-" Mary Mother, thou who wert wife, thou who wert mother, make me to be mother of a son!" But now she could bless Godthe God of the grey old church at Whinyat-that her lap was barren of a child.

Four years of childless and almost loveless wanderings lay behind her; now in the short-coach to London, now in a lugger across to Dunkerque, now in slow stage-waggons to the Rhine bank, anon in crazy Italian gigs; now with postilion, obsequious service, ranting horns; and last in tilted gypsy carts, sneaking along by night from tan to tan.

It was almost four years since they sailed from London to the Lowlands, to speak with Flamenca in the convent at Ypres her face softened at the thought of Flamenca; and then from the dead old city of Ypres they had passed to Aachen and Cologne.

It was at Cologne that the first cloud loomed upon her heart. Sinister on the unfinished tower of the great Dom she saw the beams of a giant derrick rise black, like a gallows, against the sanguine sunset. The huge crane rotted there, useless, deserted-a curse was on the Dom, the people said; it would never be completed; no work for Aldo's chisel at Cologne. Shiveringly as she watched the hawks swoop round the unfinished pinnacles and sneering cynical gargoyles of the Dom, she had thought what a father's curse might bring upon her, and upon the son and son's son of whom her heart was dreaming then. The gibbet-like beams of that century-old crane, gaunt against that sky of blood! It had seemed an omen, a portent of what was in store.

She shuddered as she recalled that memory, and she pulled her cloak around her. Somewhere in the rocks quite near a raven croaked. She listened and watched awhile. Then the Derby road grew dim to her gaze again; her thoughts were back on the road by the Rhine River.

On, on, by viny banks, in jolting waggons and swaying diligences; the red-gold leaves of late autumn shining above her under a chilly sun. It was at Coblentz that she first felt contempt for Aldo. That city of refuge was crowded with titled folk from bleeding France-weaklings, conspirators, or cowards. Foppish vicomtes, rakish old ducs, had ogled her and leered; grandes dames had eyed her young face with

envious disdain. Count Sasso, Aldo called himself at Coblentz; how he fawned upon the French refugees, how he aped their finnicking manners, how large he talked of his uncle the Cardinal, the Sasso gems, and the Sasso palazzo at Rome! She was glad to travel on to Basle; though it was at Basle she saw that pictured Dance of Death-her journey was full of such omens. The streets of Basle were thronged with plump priests and ruddy friars; license and fanaticism flaunted arm-in-arm at Basle; it was at Basle that she first saw a scoffing face peep from the hood of her new Church. She was glad to travel

on.

Then spread the grim cold wilderness of Switzerland before her; up rose the horrible region of savage Alps. November ice and snow; the steely lakes that wind-squalls fretted into molten lead; the mutter of avalanches lost like smoke among the frozen peaks, heard shudderingly by night as sleepless she lay in squalid inns; cataracts blown flappingly out, like widows' veils of vapour, from craggy ledges; the hoarse madness of torrents in drunken fury rushing; the spread of wearisome whiteness, a dazzle by day, the ghost of a world by night; the glaciers solitary and august; the shuddering, starven trees that tossed their yellowed arms despairingly before the torturing onslaught of sleety gales. At Lucerne she would fain have lingered-Lucerne, the quaint old burg with its tower rooted in black water; but no, they

must hurry on, lest winter should slam the gate upon

the pass.

Up to the pass, through mists as white and cold as the snows, they had ridden muleback; the yapping howl of wolves had chilled her blood, the lammergeyer on mighty vans had poised above her threateningly, the fog-bells had jangled ominous, as they stumbled afoot to the melancholy hut of the Capuchins on the Col. Across the gale-swept ridge they cowered, to miles of creeping motion on the other slope. Cataract and ice-slide, gaunt, skeleton mountains, bared and horribly ribbed, sheer precipices dropping from the path, the pole-marked track across the plateaux of writhen snow, the hidden gulfs where the frozen dead lay gibbering-ah, that nightmare land of the High Alps! She shuddered at the

thought.

But Italy! At first the lakeland; white-pointed mountains, smit with gold above and sheathed in silver below; rocks that at sunset blushed and sparkled like carbuncle stones, reflected in lagoons of fluid emerald and sapphire; stiff agave, thorny cactus, flat-topped pine, withering lemon grove, brown palmy cluster-the fading flush of rose-oleanders in the patio of that inn where she was happy for a daythat charmed, enchanted hostel of Lost Time. Then came the piled and tumbled hills, that undulated into the vastness of lonesome heaths, where gaunt, slant crosses told of bygone stabbings unavenged; then