Miss Clinker's face.

"What is it?" he gasped, and Arabella saw that pale as he had been, with
his poor head all bandaged, he grew still more pale--and she realized
how terribly weak he must be, and how carefully she must calculate what
she could reply.

"I understand that Mr. Carlyon is in London upon a visit, and that the
Misses La Sarthe have gone to the sea--" and then, as his eyes touched
her with their pitiful questioning surprise, she blurted out the truth.

"Miss Halcyone La Sarthe was fetched away on last Thursday by her
stepmother--I did not hear the name--and no one knows where she has
gone. La Sarthe Chase is shut up."

John Derringham closed his eyes--his powers of reasoning were not strong
enough yet to grasp the actual meaning of this--it seemed to him as
though Halcyone were dead, taken away from him by some fate and that all
things were at an end.

Arabella grew very frightened.

"Mr. Carlyon telegraphs from London every day," she ventured to
announce.

But this appeared to bring no comfort, and the nurse returning, signed
to her to leave the room, for John Derringham lay still as one dead.

And, when Arabella arrived at her own sanctum, she burst into tears.
What a fool she had been to tell him that, she felt.

All these days, Halcyone passed in a repressed agony in spite of her
prayers and unshaken beliefs. She knew it was her winter time and she
must bear it until the spring should come, though it was none the less
hard to support. But she got through the hours with perfect surface
calm--and her stepsisters thought her stupid and dull, while Mrs.
Anderton decided there was something unnatural about a girl who took not
the slightest interest in shopping, and was perfectly indifferent about
all the attractive garments which were put upon her back. She always
expressed her thanks so gently, and was ever sweet and willing to be of
use, but the look of pain remained deep in those star-like, mysterious
eyes, and caused sensations of discomfort to grow in Mrs. Anderton's
kindly breast.

Cheiron's laconic messages were delivered to Halcyone every day by
Demetrius.

John Derringham was no worse.

He was having every care.

Sir Benjamin Grant had gone down again.

His ankle was satisfactorily set.

But never a word that he had asked for her, and yet she read in the
morning papers each day, as well as knew from her Professor's
information, that her lover was going on splendidly, and would s