over the wind-swept moors. [64]Monica was generally silent, always reserved and unapproachable, and yet he felt that a certain vantage-ground had been gained, and he did not intend to allow it to slip away. Unconsciously almost to himself, the wish had grown to win the heart of this wild, beautiful, lonely young creature. Yet the charm of her solitary tamelessness was so great that he hardly wished the spell to be too suddenly broken. He could not picture Monica other than she was—and yet he was growing to love her with every fibre of his being.

[64]

But fortune was not kind to Randolph, as an incident that quickly followed showed him.

He and Monica had ridden one day across a wild sweep of trackless moorland, when they came in sight of a picturesque [65]Elizabethan house, in a decidedly dilapidated condition, whose red brick walls and mullioned windows took Randolph’s fancy. He asked who lived there.

[65]

“No one now,” answered Monica, with a touch as of regret in her voice; “no one has lived there for years and years. Once it was such a bright, happy home—we used to play there so often, Arthur and I, when we were children; but the master died, the children were taken away, and the house was shut up. That was ten years ago. I have never been there since.”

“Who is the owner? Does he never reside here now?”

“He has never been back. I believe he is not rich, and could not keep up the place. He must be about five-and-twenty by this time. He is Sir Conrad Fitzgerald[66]—he was such a nice boy when I used to play with him.”

[66]

Randolph started suddenly; he controlled himself in a moment, but Monica’s eyes were very quick, and she had seen the instinctive recoil at the sound of the name.

“Do you know Conrad Fitzgerald?” she asked.

“We have met,” he answered, somewhat grimly. “I do not claim the honour of his acquaintance.”

Monica glanced at him. She saw something in the stern lines of Randolph’s face that told a tale of its own. She was not afraid to state the conclusion she reached by looking at him.

“That means that you have quarrelled,” she said.

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