their deliverer, Anastasia. But if they found a woman here--a woman not
ill-looking--" Simon Orts snapped his fingers. "Faith, I leave you to
conjecture," said he.

They had both risen, he smiling, the woman in a turbulence of hope and
terror. "Swear to it, Simon!"

"Anastasia, were affairs as you suppose them, I would have a curt while to
live. Were affairs as you suppose them, I would stand now at the threshold
of eternity. And I swear to you, upon my soul's salvation, that I have
nothing to fear. Nothing will ever hurt me any more."

"No, you would not dare to lie in the moment of death," she said, after
a considerable pause. "I believe you. I will go. Good-bye, Simon." Lady
Allonby went toward the door opening into the corridor, but turned there
and came back to him. "I shall never see you again. And, la, I think that
I rather hate you than otherwise, for you remind me of things I would
willingly forget. But, Simon, I wish we had gone to live in that little
cottage we planned, and quarrelled over, and never built! I think we would
have been happy."

Simon Orts raised her hand to his lips. "Yes," said he, "we would have been
happy. I would have been by this a man doing a man's work in the world, and
you a matron, grizzling, perhaps, but rich in content, and in love opulent.
As it is, you have your flatterers, your gossip, and your cards; I have my
gin. Good-bye, Anastasia."

"Simon, why have you done--this?"

The Vicar of Heriz Magna flung out his hands in a gesture of impotence. "I