He said to himself, bitterly, that such thoughts might comfort angels and women; they brought no consolation to him. “You must remember Clarice,” she pleaded; “Clarice, who loves you so well.” “I remember all. Hermione, if I send for you when I am dying, should it be soon or should it be in twenty years, you will come to me?” “Yes,” she replied, with a deep-drawn, bitter sob. “I will come, Ronald. Now, farewell.” She was pure and innocent as the white doves that fed from her hand. She saw no wrong in bending her sweet, sad face over him for that last, most sorrowful embrace. Once more his lips touched hers, but the chill upon them was the chill of death. “Good-by, my love, my dear, lost love, good-by,” he said, and the words died away in a moan. Another minute and she had passed out of sight. When the hour of death came it was not so bitter for him as that in which Hermione Lorriston passed out of his sight. He flung himself on the ground, praying the skies might fall and cover him; that he might never rise to meet the sunlight again. From that day he was a changed man; he felt it and knew it himself. The quiet, resigned content for which he had been trying so hard was further from him than ever. The resignation arriving from philosophy had forsaken him. Night and day he brooded over the one idea that she had loved him, and he had lost her. Day and night he pondered over the mystery of that letter. But for his wife’s sake he would have made the whole matter public and would have insisted on having it thoroughly sifted; but a “still, small voice” pleaded for Clarice. It would be so hard for her to see and know that his thoughts were still all of the past. That did not prevent him from making a private investigation of the matter. On the first day that he saw Conyers, the groom, he called him. “I want you,” he said. “There are some questions I wish to ask you that, if you answer truthfully, will be of inestimable benefit to me; if you answer them falsely, I shall be still further deceived. Perhaps experience has embittered me; I have little faith left in man’s honesty. I will buy your truth, Conyers, if you swear to me, on your oath, to say nothing but what is perfectly, strictly correct. I will give you ten pounds, and, should you be able to discover that which I wish to know, I will hereafter give you fifty.” Conyers was an honest man, and Sir Ronald’s words hurt him more than he cared to own. “If you offered me twice fifty pounds, Sir Ronald, to tell a willful lie, I would not do it for you or for any one else. You can please yourself about believing whether I tell you the truth or not.” His bluntness did not displease the master of Aldenmere, who looked at the groom’s face with a grim smile. “If ever the world does to you what it has done to me,” he said, quietly, “you will either doubt your own sanity or the truth of your fellowmen. Come out here a few minutes; I want to talk to you.”