CHAPTER XII.
'THE GREATER CANTLE OF THE WORLD IS LOST.' The sky was still cloudless when John Hammond strolled slowly up the leafy avenue at Fellside.

He had been across the valley and up the hill to Easedale Tarn, and then by rough untrodden ways, across a chaos of rock and heather, into a second valley, long, narrow, and sterile, known as Far Easedale, a desolate gorge, a rugged cleft in the heart of the mountains.

The walk had been long and laborious; but only in such clambering and toiling, such expenditure of muscular force and latent heat, could the man's restless soul endure those long hours of suspense.
'How will she answer me?
Oh, my God! how will she answer ?' he said within himself, as he walked up the romantic winding road, which made so picturesque an approach to Lady Maulevrier's domain, 'Is my idol gold or clay?
How will she come through the crucible?
Oh, dearest, sweetest, loveliest, only be true to the instinct of your womanhood, and my cup will be full of bliss, and all my days will flow as sweetly as the burden of a song.

But if you prove heartless, if you love the world's.
wealth better than you love me--ah! then all is over, and you and I are lost to each other for ever.

I have made up my mind.' His face settled into an expression of indomitable determination, as of a man who would die rather than be false to his own purpose.