Sometimes a wild impulse came over him, urging him to go to her again, to plead his cause with her, to tell her all the passionate, desolate anguish of the past few months, to pray to her as men pray for their lives. But he remembered what he had said to her, that if she sent him away he should not return to pray his prayer again. All the pride of his proud race came to his aid. She had accepted his loving words, she had taken a kiss that was sacred as a betrothal from his lips, and she had rejected him. He would not plead to her again; let his ruin and misery lie at her door; it should never be told that he had stooped as no Alden before him had done. Yet had she but smiled upon him, he would have knelt like the humblest of slaves at her feet. CHAPTER XVII. TWO YEARS AFTERWARD. Sir Ronald went home again. He found little or no change in that quiet neighborhood. One of the visits he paid was to Mount Severn, where he met with a welcome that would have gladdened any man’s heart. Clarice did not attempt to conceal her delight; her eyes beamed, her face brightened, her hands stole tremblingly into his. “How long you have been away!” she said. “This is the dreariest summer I can remember.” Yet it was only two months since he had gone up to London to try whether gayety would cure him. They made him so welcome it was like coming home. Mrs. Severn pitied him because he looked ill. She placed him in the sunniest corner of the room; she made him stay for a _récherché_ little dinner. Clarice talked to him and sang to him. She poured out the treasures of her intellect like water at his feet. Another man would have yielded almost helplessly to the charm, but his haggard face never changed, no smile came to his stern, gray lips. He had vowed to himself before he entered the house that nothing could induce him to mention Lady Hermione’s name, yet he longed to hear it from other lips. Clarice told him of the Gordons and the Thringstons, but the name he longed to hear was not mentioned. He perceived that Clarice purposely avoided it, and wondered why. Was Lady Hermione ill? Had anything happened to her? At last he could endure the suspense no longer, and he said, “You say nothing of the Lorristons. Are they well?” Her beautiful face flushed, and her eyes rested on him for one-half minute with an expression he could not understand. “I am sorry you have asked me,” she replied in a low voice. “I can only tell you what will pain you.” “Tell me,” he said. “I cannot answer for the truth of such a rumor. I do not see as much of her as I used to do, but I am told there is every prospect of a marriage between her and--and Kenelm Eyrle.”