'How dared he kiss me! Why did I not prevent him?' she thought, while her cheeks burned, and the conviction that he had been only amusing himself with her grew hourly stronger in her heart. She remembered, too, that he had laughed once or twice during the most earnest parts of her conversation about her troubles, and she thought that most people could hear of the misfortunes of others with tolerable equanimity. Was he really engaged to Blanche Galloway after all? and was she the means of preventing the promised visit on 'the morrow'--the visit that never took place? His visit to Birkwoodbrae on the very day of his return from Alyth was certainly duly reported to that young lady by Mademoiselle Rosette, who had watched and followed him--and smiled brightly as she did so--for where is the French soubrette to be found who does not feel a malicious pleasure in knowing that her master or her mistress is being deceived? The first day of Colville's absence after that thrilling visit dragged wearily on, and, when evening came and the sun set, Mary marvelled was it eight hours since she rose that morning. It looked more like eight hundred, and still longer looked the days that followed, till anger began to mingle with her depression, anxiety, and sense of unmerited humiliation, all of which enhanced her desire to be gone. How little could she conceive that, wounded in the right hand by the explosion of a friend's fowling-piece when shooting, he was confined at first to bed, and then to his room at Craigmhor; that he was thus unable to write to or communicate with her; and that thus, too, probably she would never see him again, for by the evening of the third day the arrangements for the departure of Ellinor and herself were finally completed. 'Would that I could peep into our future, Mary,' said Ellinor, tearfully, on their last evening in their old home. 'Ah! the future is indeed a mystery to us,' said Mary; 'but blessed be God for all His gifts!' she added, in a broken voice, as she thought of the legend over the old doorway, through which they would pass no more. Many relics were packed and sent to the manse, there to be kept till better times came; everything else was left in care of the still absent Dr. Wodrow, to be sold for their behoof; but, for reasons to be given, strange to say, nothing was _sold_. Though the apparently strange conduct of Captain Colville in teaching her to love him, and exciting brilliant hopes in her heart only to let them fade, had so deeply mortified Mary that already his image was passing out of her busy thoughts, or seemed as only something to be forgotten as soon as possible, she was not without strong though vague hope of the future for Ellinor and herself; but hope has often been likened to the mirage of the desert, and as being often quite as illusory.