CHAPTER XLIII.
A MAY AFTERNOON What is this love that now on angel wing Sweeps us amid the stars in passionate calm.
-- MACDONALD.
Elizabeth stood on the terrace in the sweet stillness of a May afternoon.

She had been gathering flowers for the dinner-table and drawing-room--masses of white and mauve lilac, long golden trails of laburnum, dainty pink and white May blossoms--but though the Guelder roses almost dropped into her hand, she passed them by untouched and with averted eyes.

All her life they had been her special favourites, but now they recalled too vividly a painful episode--the day when Malcolm Herrick so sternly and so sorrowfully refused her his friendship.
Malcolm had been nearly twenty-four hours at the Wood House, and she had hardly exchanged a dozen words with him, and already he had signified his intention of returning to town the next morning, in spite of Cedric's vehement protestations.

He had arrived so late the previous evening that he had had only time for a hasty greeting before he went to his room to prepare for dinner.

During the evening the young couple had naturally engrossed his attention.