Thus talking together they remained closeted for a most unconscionable time. Clara had had her purpose to carry out, and to Herbert the moments had been too precious to cause him any regret as they passed. But now at last a knock was heard at the door, and Lady Desmond, without waiting for an answer to it, entered the room. Clara immediately started from her seat, not as though she were either guilty or tremulous, but with a brave resolve to go on with her purposed plan. "Mamma," she said, "it is fixed now; it cannot be altered now." "What is fixed, Clara?" "Herbert and I have renewed our engagement, and nothing must now break it, unless we die." "Mr. Fitzgerald, if this be true your conduct to my daughter has been unmanly as well as ungenerous." "Lady Desmond, it is true; and I think that my conduct is neither unmanly nor ungenerous." "Your own relations are against you, sir." "What relations?" asked Clara, sharply. "I am not speaking to you, Clara; your absurdity and romance are so great that I cannot speak to you." "What relations, Herbert?" again asked Clara; for she would not for the world have had Lady Fitzgerald against her. "Lady Desmond has, I believe, seen my Aunt Letty two or three times lately; I suppose she must mean her." "Oh," said Clara, turning away as though she were now satisfied. And then Herbert, escaping from the house as quickly as he could, rode home with a renewal of that feeling of triumph which he had once enjoyed before when returning from Desmond Court to Castle Richmond. On the next day Herbert started for London. The parting was sad enough, and the occasion of it was such that it could hardly be otherwise. "I am quite sure of one thing," he said to his sister Emmeline, "I shall never see Castle Richmond again." And, indeed, one may say that small as might be his chance of doing so, his wish to do so must be still less. There could be no possible inducement to him to come back to a place which had so nearly been his own, and the possession of which he had lost in so painful a manner. Every tree about the place, every path across the wide park, every hedge and ditch and hidden leafy corner, had had for him a special interest,--for they had all been his own. But all that was now over. They were not only not his own, but they belonged to one who was mounting into his seat of power over his head.