John Musgrave looked at her steadily.

"Do you think it is altogether kind--to Diogenes," he asked, "to stay away so long? Don't you think that perhaps he misses you--badly?"

Peggy smiled faintly.

"I think it is better he should forget," she replied.

"It isn't always possible to forget," he returned slowly. "I am so sure he will never forget that I am glad our secret is exposed. I am going to return you your pet, Miss Annersley."

Peggy turned to him quickly in protest, and put out a small hand and laid it on his sleeve.

"No," she cried, "no. You have more right to him than anyone. You are fond of him too. You must keep him. I _want_ you to keep him."

John Musgrave looked at the hand on his sleeve. He had seen it there once before, and the sight of it had caused him embarrassment. It did not cause him embarrassment now; he enjoyed the feel of the slight pressure on his arm. Suddenly, without pausing to consider, he put his own hand over it, and kept it there.

"I want you to have him, and I want to keep him too," he said. "How are we going to get over that?"

Peggy laughed nervously.

"I don't know," she replied. "I don't see how that can be."

"I hoped you would see," he returned gravely, and halted and imprisoned her other hand, and stood facing her. "There is a way, if only I wasn't so old and dull for your bright youth." He released her hands gently.

"I suppose you are right, and it isn't possible."

"You don't appear old or dull to me," she said softly. "I--didn't mean that."

He went closer to her and remained gazing earnestly into the downcast face, his own tense features and motionless pose not more still than the girl's, as she waited quietly in the silent dusk with a heart which thumped so violently that it seemed to her he must hear its rapid beat.

"It appears to me preposterous," he said, in a voice which held a ring of wonder in its tones, "that I, so much older than you, so unsuited in every sense, should find the courage to tell you how greatly I love you.

It is scarcely to be expected that you can care for me sufficiently to allow me any hope... And yet... Miss Annersley, am I too presumptuous?"

"No," Peggy whispered. She slipped a hand shyly into his and laughed softly. "I think you have discovered the best way of settling the ownership of our dog," she said.

"I am not thinking of the dog," he answered, bending over her.

"I wasn't thinking of the dog either," she replied.

With her hand still in John Musgrave's she walked to the parapet and sat down. Mr Musgrave seated himself beside her, and, gaining courage from the contact of the warm hand lying so confidingly in his own, he felt emboldened to proceed with his avowal of love.

"My feeling for you, Miss Annersley, is as unchangeable as it is deep.

It has developed so imperceptibly that, until you went away, and I realised how greatly I missed you, what a blank in my days your absence made, I never suspected how dear you were becoming to me. When I suspected it I was distressed, because it seemed to me incredible that you, young and beautiful and so greatly admired, could ever entertain for me any kinder feeling than that of friendship. I can scarcely believe even now that you feel more than friendship for me. I must appear old to you, and my ideas are old-fashioned, and, I begin to see now, intolerant."

"Not intolerant," Peggy corrected. "If I wasn't confident that your heart is so kind, and your sympathies so wide, that it will be as easy for you to give and take as for me to meet you in this respect, I should be afraid to risk the happiness of both our futures. But I haven't any fears at all. I think I have loved you from the moment when you met me weeping in the road, and took charge of Diogenes."

"That," he said a little doubtfully, "is gratitude."

She shook her head.

"No," she insisted, "it is something more enduring than that."

At which interesting point in the discussion, to John Musgrave's annoyance, a shrill scream penetrated the stillness, and Mrs Chadwick's voice was heard exclaiming in accents of astonishment and delight:

"Oh, Diogenes, Diogenes, dear old fellow!... Wherever did you come from? And how did you get your coat in that horrible mess?"

Diogenes, finding it slow on the terrace, had sauntered into the drawing-room and discovered himself to Mrs Chadwick.

Peggy glanced swiftly into the face of the man beside her and laughed happily, and John Musgrave, finding to his vast amazement the laughing face held firmly between his two hands, bent his head suddenly and kissed the curving lips.

It is possible that could he have looked back into the days before he knew Peggy he would have failed to recognise as himself the man who, in response to the vicar's assertion that occasionally people married for love, had made the shocked ejaculation: "Do they, indeed?" John Musgrave was learning.

CHAPTER THIRTY.

The Rev Walter Errol, removing, his surplice in the little vestry at the finish of one of the simplest and most pleasing ceremonies at which he had ever been required to officiate, looked forth through the mullioned window to watch his oldest and best-loved friend passing along the gravelled path in the sunlight with his bride upon his arm.

The sight of John Musgrave married gave him greater satisfaction than anything that had befallen since his own happy marriage-day. The one thing lacking to make his friend the most lovable of men was supplied in the newly-made contract which bound him for good and ill to the woman at his side. There would be, in the vicar's opinion, so much of good in the union that ill would be crowded out and find no place in the lives of this well-assorted pair, who, during the brief period of their engagement, had practised so successfully that deference to each other's opinions which smooths away difficulties and prevents a dissimilarity in ideas from approaching disagreement. The future happiness of Mr and Mrs John Musgrave was based on the sure foundation of mutual respect.

While the vicar stood at the window, arrested in the business of disrobing by the engrossment of his thoughts, Robert, having finished rolling up the red carpet in the aisle, entered the vestry and approached the window and stood, as he so often did, at the vicar's elbow, and gazed also after the newly-married couple, a frown knitting his heavy brows, and, notwithstanding the handsome fee in his pocket, an expression of most unmistakable contempt in his eyes as they rested upon the bridegroom.

"They be done for, sir," he said, with a gloomy jerk of the head in the direction of the vanishing pair.

The vicar turned his face towards the speaker, the old whimsical smile lighting his features.

"Not done for, Robert. They are just beginning life," he said.

"They be done for," Robert persisted obstinately, and stared at the open register which John Musgrave and his wife had signed. "Ay, they be done for."

"When you married Hannah were you done for?" the vicar inquired.

"Yes, sir, I were," Robert answered with sour conviction.

It passed through Walter Errol's mind to wonder whether the non-success of Robert's marital relations was due solely to Hannah's fault.

"How came you to marry Hannah?" he asked.

"Did I never tell you 'ow that came about?" Robert said. "I didn' go wi' Hannah, not first along. I went wi' a young woman from Cross-ways.

Me an' 'er had been walking out for a goodish while when 'er says to me one night, 'Will 'ee come in a-Toosday?' I says, 'Yes, I will.' Well, sir, you never seed rain like it rained that Toosday. I wasn't goin' to get into my best clothes to go out there an' get soaked to the skin in; so I brushed myself up as I was, an' changed my boots; an' when I got out 'er turned up 'er nose at me. So I went straight off an' took up with Hannah."

"I think," observed the vicar, "that you were a little hasty."

"I've thought so since, sir," Robert admitted. "The mistake I made was in 'avin' further truck wi' any of them. Leave the wimmin alone, I says, if you want to be comfortable. A man when 'e marries is done for."

Walter Errol, having finished disrobing, took his soft hat and went out to the motor, which had returned from the Hall to fetch him, and was driven swiftly to the scene of the festivities, the joyous pealing of the bells sounding harmoniously in the lazy stillness of the summer day.

Past John Musgrave's home the motor bore him; past Miss Simpson's comfortable house, where the blinds were jealously lowered as though a funeral, instead of a wedding, were in progress. And, indeed, for the Moresby spinster the chiming of the marriage-peal was as the funeral knell ringing the last rites over the grave of her dead hopes. Miss Simpson was the only person in Moresby who sympathised with the sexton's opinion that John Musgrave was done for.

At the Hall only the immediate members of both families were present, with the exception of the vicar and his wife. John Musgrave had stipulated for a quiet wedding. Very proud and happy he looked as, with his wife beside him, he greeted his oldest friend; and the vicar, with an affectionate hand on his shoulder, exclaimed:

"It isn't Coelebs any longer, John. You were a wise man and waited patiently for the right woman."

"I hope I shall prove to be the right woman, John," Peggy whispered, drawing more closely to him as the vicar passed on, and looking up in her husband's face with wide, diffident grey eyes, eyes that were wells of happiness, despite their anxious questioning.