They rode through the little town, past the inn where Thresk was staying and the iron gates of a Park where, amidst elm-trees, the blackened ruins of a great house gaped to the sky.
"Some day you will live there again," said Thresk, and Stella's lips twitched with a smile of humour.
"I shall be very glad after to-day to leave the house I am living in," she said quietly, and the words struck him dumb.

He had subtlety enough to understand her.

The rooms would mock her with memories of vain dreams.
Yet he kept silence.

It was too late in any case to take back what he had said; and even if she would listen to him marriage wouldn't be fair.

He would be hampered, and that, just at this time in his life, would mean failure--failure for her no less than for him.