Vane, past making any comment, remained silent and in utter bewilderment. His heart seemed to stand still; and he felt a more deadly jealousy, a more sickening and permanent pang in it, than he had ever endured before. He remembered what he himself had seen in that bower, and recalled the eavesdropper in the conservatory, who was seen by another, and whose personal appearance tallied exactly with what Desmond had said, and an emotion of heart-sick misery--of bitter, bitter disappointment and hopeless desolation, came upon him. Great was the mental torture he endured for some moments. While he had been awaiting her in that walk, with such emotions in his soul as were known only to heaven and himself, she had been in dalliance with another--an unknown man--in that accursed bower _again_! 'Violent passions,' he knew, 'are formed in solitude. In the bustle of the world no object has time to make deep impression.' So are deep emotions formed in solitude; but where had she learned to love this unknown, if love she did? and if she did not, what was the object of their secret meetings, and whence the power he seemed to have over her? All these ideas and many more flashed through the mind of Jerry Vane, whose lips became dry as dust. His tongue, though parched, seemed cleaving to the roof of his mouth, whilst a rush of blood seemed mounting to his brain, and a giddiness came upon him. He heard the drawling and 'chaffing' remarks upon the arbour scene, which Desmond had resumed, but knew not a word he said, while arm-and-arm he mechanically promenaded to and fro with him. He had but one idea--Ida false, and _thus_! He knew not what to think, in whom to believe, or in whom to trust now, if it were so. Heaven, could such falsehood be, and within a few brief hours! he thought. Then for the first time there began to creep into the heart of Vane something of that hatred which in the end becomes so fierce, cruel, and bitter--the hate that is born of baffled or unrequited love! Anon, his heart wavered again; the unwonted emotion began to die away; it seemed too strange and unnatural and the passion he had for Ida vanquished him once more, by suggestions of utter unbelief, or there being an unexplainable, but dreadful, mistake somewhere. It could not be that all along she had been deceiving him and others by playing a double game of dissimulation, while acting outwardly such gravity and grief! The soft and sad expression of the chaste and sweetly pretty face that seemed before him even then forbade the idea, yet the galling fear, the stinging suspicion, remained behind.