200
jorie was changed; her face was thinner, some of its colour gone. Yet the little she had lost was more than atoned for in the much that she had gained. She held his hand, she looked him frankly in the eyes.
"So it is all right, little girl, all right now?"
She nodded. "It is all right. I am happier than I deserve to be. Oh, Hugh, I have been weak and foolish, wavering and uncertain. I can see it all now, but now at last I know--I do know my own mind."
"And your own heart?"
"And my own heart."
She wondered as she looked at him if ever he could have guessed what had been in her mind that day when she had gone to Hurst Dormer to see him. How full of love for him her heart had been then! And then she remembered what he had said, those four words that had ended her dream for ever--"Better than my life." So he loved Joan, and now she knew that she too loved with her whole heart.
Death had been very close, and perhaps it had been pity for that fine young life that seemed to be so near its end that had awakened love. Yet, whatever the cause, she knew now that her love for Tom had come to stay.
"And Joan?" Marjorie asked.
"Joan?" he said. "Joan, she is in her own home."
"And her heart is still hard against you, Hugh?"
"Her pride is still between us, Marjorie," he said, and quickly turned the conversation, and a few minutes later was up in the bedroom talking cheerily enough to Tom.
"It's all right, Alston, everything is all right. Lady Linden wanted to shoot the horse; but I wouldn't have it. I owe him too much--you understand, Alston, don't you? Everything is all right between Marjorie and me."
And then Hugh went back to Hurst Dormer--thank, Heaven there was some happiness in this world! There was happiness at Cornbridge, and after Cornbridge Hurst Dormer seemed darker and more solitary than ever.
It was while she had been talking to Hugh that Marjorie had made up her mind.
"I am going to tell Joan the whole truth, the whole