or cautiously closed, admonished
him that he was alone.

"Lina, dear Lina," he called, reluctant to believe that she had left him
so abruptly.

There was no answer, not even a rustle of the damask.

He was alone. When satisfied of this, the young man found his way to the
light again. But for the terror and evident recoil of the person who had
evaded him, he would have considered the whole adventure a capital joke,
in which he had been famously baffled; but there was something too
earnest in that struggle and cry for trifling, and the remembrance left
him with a heart-ache.

When Ralph came back to the breakfast-table, he found Lina seated in his
mother's place. A faint color came into her cheek as she saw him, but
otherwise she was calm and thoughtful. Nay, there was a shade of sorrow
upon her countenance, but nothing of the flush and tumult that would
naturally have followed the encounter from which she was so fresh.

Spite of himself, Ralph was shocked. The delicacy of a first passion had
been a little outraged by the rude way in which he and Lina had just
met, and struggled together, but her composure wounded him still more
deeply. "So young, so innocent, and so deceptive," he thought, looking
at her almost angrily, "I would not have believed it."

Lina was all unconscious. Full of her own sorrowful perplexities, she
experienced none of the bashful tremors that had troubled her in
anticipation. That interview in Mrs. Harrington's room had chilled all
the joy of her young love. Thus she sat, pale and cold, under the
reproachful glances of her lover.

And General Harrington was watching them with his keen, worldly glances.
A smile crept over his lips as he read those young hearts, a smile of
cool quiet craft, which no one remarked; but there was destiny in it.

Altogether the breakfast was a gloomy meal. There was discord in every
heart, and a foreshadowing of trouble which no one dared to speak about.
For some time after his father had left the table, Ralph sat moodily
thinking of Lina's changed manner. A revulsion came over him as he
thought of his singular encounter with her that morning, and with the
quick anger of youth, he allowed her to rise from the table and leave
the room without a smile or a word.

James saw nothing that was passing. Self-centred and thoughtful, he was
scarcely conscious of their presence.

Lina sought Mrs. Harrington's chamber, but found it perfectly quiet, and
the lady asleep.