That same evening, keeping in mind what the groom had said to her, the maid asked her mistress if she had found the small paper parcel on her toilet-table. Lady Hermione smiled. “Yes, I have it,” she replied, and then her maid forgot the whole matter. All that day Sir Ronald waited impatiently for his answer. No day had ever seemed to him half so long before. “She will send a messenger,” he said; “she will not keep me in suspense until morning.” But, though he watched and waited, no messenger came. He sent away his dinner untasted; he debated within himself whether he should ride over to Leeholme or not, and he decided no--that would not do at all. How he lived through the night he did not know; no rest or sleep came to him. But the morning brought him a letter, and that letter contained his death warrant. He saw at once it was from Leeholme Park, and he held it for some minutes unopened in his hand. “It is either life or death,” he said to himself, “and brave men know how to die.” He took it with him to his favorite nook, the shade of a large lime tree, known as “King Charles’ Tree,” from the fact of the Merrie Monarch having once hidden there. He opened it there, and from that moment the sun of earthly happiness set for Ronald Alden. “Believe me,” the letter began, “that it costs me even more to refuse your prayer, Sir Ronald, than it will cost you to read that refusal. My whole heart grieves for you; but I cannot be your wife. I have not the love to give you that a woman should give to the man she marries. I am your friend for life. “HERMIONE LORRISTON.” Not many lines to break a man’s heart, and destroy the whole happiness of his life, but Sir Ronald sat hour after hour under the lime tree, and the summer sun never shone, nor did the flowers bloom for him again. CHAPTER XV. WITHOUT HOPE. The sun shone round him, the flowers bloomed fair, the sweet south wind whispered of all bright things; but Sir Ronald never raised his despairing face to the summer heavens. Life and hope were crushed within him; he did not care to rise from the ground where he had flung himself in the first wild paroxysm of grief; he had some vague hope that he might die there; but it takes much to kill a strong man. The sunbeams grew warm; the day had its duties. He had arranged to see his steward at noon. A tenant farmer had promised to wait upon him concerning the renewal of a lease. Life was too full of occupation for despair. He rose at last, and looked his future in the face. “She has killed me,” he said to himself; “surely as ever man was slain.” He crushed the letter in his hands.