of harm's way that she did not question her much as
to the reasons for such an abrupt departure: it was not till afterward
that she learned that it had been brought about by the influence of
Waring. It is unnecessary to mention that the adieus were not
accomplished without a certain amount of tears; but they were all shed
by Fanny Molyneux. Cecil dared not yet trust herself to weep. She took a
far more formal farewell of Mr. Fullarton, and the chaplain did not even
venture a parting benediction.

The heavy traveling-chariot, with its hundred cunning contrivances, is
packed at last, and Karl, the accomplished courier, wiping from his
blonde mustache the drops of the stirrup-cup, touches his cap with his
accustomed formula, "Zi ces dames zont bretes?" Mark Waring leans over
the carriage door to say "Good-by:" the hand he presses lies in his
grasp, unresponsive and unsympathetic as a splinter from an iceberg. His
sad, earnest look pleads in vain, for there is no softening or kindness
in Cecil's desolate, dreamy eyes. The road on which they are to travel
is the same for some leagues as that along which Royston Keene must
return, and she is thinking, divided between hope and fear, if there may
not be a possibility of their meeting. The wheels move, and hasty
farewells are waved, and Mark stands there half stupefied, unconscious
of any thing but a sense of lonely wretchedness. The one solitary link
that still binds him to Cecil Tresilyan will be severed when the letter
is delivered that he holds in his hand.

As the carriage swept round the corner of the terrace, it passed close
to the spot where Armand de Chateaumesnil sat basking in the sunshine.
The invalid lifted his cap in courteous adieu, but his face grew dark,
and his shaggy brows were knit savagely.

"On l'a triche donc, apres tout," he muttered; "Sang Dieu! les absens
ont diablement tort." Sunk as she was at that moment in gloomy
meditations, Cecil never forgot that the last object on which her eyes
lighted in Dorade was the blasted wreck of the crippled Algerian.

Molyneux and his wife stood silent till their friends were quite out of
sight, then Harry turned slowly round and gazed at his _mignonne_. He
knew that the same thought was in both their minds, for her sweet face
was paler than his own. (Neither of them guessed at the truth, and they
saw in Mark Waring nothing more than an old acquaintance of the
Tresilyans.)

"Royston will be here in four hours," h