He looked at it
with a sad smile, pressed his lips to it, and then stooping down, he took a
stick lying by the log, and scooped out a deep hole in the mossy, fibrous
earth. Into it he dropped the ring, covering it again with all the leafy
"rubble and wreck" of the wood. He covered his eyes for a moment, and rose.
"Let me take you home. I will write to Lady Coryston to-night."
They walked silently through the wood, and to the house. Never, in her
whole life, had Marcia felt so unhappy. And yet, already, she recognized
what she had done as both inevitable and past recall.
They parted, just with a lingering look into each other's eyes, and a
piteous murmur from her: "I'm sorry!--oh, I'm _sorry_!"
At the moment when Marcia and Newbury were crossing the formal garden
on the west front of the house, one of two persons in Lady Coryston's
sitting-room observed them.
These persons were--strange to say--Lady Coryston and her eldest son. Lady
Coryston, after luncheon, had felt so seriously unwell that she had retired
to her sitting-room, with strict injunctions that she must be left alone.
Sir Wilfrid and Lester started on a Sunday walk; Marcia and Newbury had
disappeared.
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