'Well, I scarcely know,' replied Vane, with a laugh that certainly had no merriment in it. 'Do you really mean this?' 'Yes,' he replied, curtly. She was silent, but looked at him pleadingly, and even upbraidingly across the table, while Jerry, becoming, as he thought, grim as Ajax, busied himself with a piece of partridge pie. 'No, no,' thought he; 'I shall not again begin that hazardous play with love, which some one truly calls "the deadly gambling of heart and thought and sense, which casts all stakes in faith upon the venture of another's life."' He had hoped that by the mere force of his own passionate love for her some tenderness might be reawakened in her heart for him; and now--now, after all, she was actually fooling him--vulgarly fooling him! By a glance that was exchanged between them they tacitly quitted the room when breakfast was over, and passed together--he following with undisguised reluctance--into the garden, through a window which opened like a folding-door on the back terrace of the mansion. 'What is the meaning of this sudden departure, Jerry?' she asked, when they reached a part of the garden near the very bower Desmond had referred to. 'Do you mean it?' 'I do.' 'How strange you are in your manner, Jerry! Look at me! why, you are quite pale!' He dared not tell her the cause at first; he felt ashamed of his own folly--ashamed of her and of the accusation he had to make. 'I was in the rhododendron walk last night. You did not come, as you promised.' 'I--I could not,' said she, her pallor increasing, as she cast down her eyes. 'My heart was wrung by your absence, Ida; but still more wrung--ay, tortured nigh unto death--by the cause!' '_Cause?_' said she, trembling. 'Yes,' he replied, sharply and bitterly. 'Oh, you know not the cause,' she said sadly, as she shook her head. 'I do know, and so do others; but I have no right to question your actions or control your movements--no warrant for--God help me, Ida, I scarcely know what I say.' 'So it seems,' said she, a little haughtily. 'Oh, Ida, what is this man to you?' he asked, huskily. 'To me--who--what man?' she asked, with a bewildered air. 'He who is always hanging about you--he who detained you in that arbour last night, when you promised to meet me, and give me the answer I prayed for in yonder oriel.' Astonishment, alarm, and anxiety pervaded the delicate coldness of her pure, pale face, and then a flush--the hectic of unwonted anger--crossed it. 'Jerry--Mr. Vane--are you mad?' she exclaimed. 'How dare you address me thus?' 'Mad--I fear so; but for the love of pity, Ida----' 'Well, sir.' 'Tell me, what am I to think?' 'Enough,' said she coldly; 'the words we have exchanged are most painful to us both.' 'They are agony to me, Ida. But say, were you in that arbour last night?' 'On the way to meet you, _I was_,' she replied, but with hesitation in her manner. 'And there you remained?'