“It was all my fault,” sobbed Lucy, who was ever ready to cry _mea culpa_; “I had no right to tell you I was sorry to go to Ireland. But oh, Mr. Desmond, forget that you have ever spoken to me, and be true to the lady you loved so dearly, long ago! If it is hard for me to lose you, it would be harder for her. I will go to Ireland; I will try to do my duty; I will try to be happy. You have been so kind to me--and--Mrs. Jerningham--has been so kind too; I am grateful to you both; and when I am far away, I shall think of you both with love and gratitude, and pray for your happiness every day of my life.” She had been quick to identify that lady whom Laurence had so carefully avoided naming; she understood now, for the first time, the nature of the tie that bound him to Mrs. Jerningham. “I am to go to Ireland in a very few days,” she said, after a brief pause, during which Laurence Desmond sat motionless, his face hidden by his hand; “I will say good-bye at once. I shall see you again, of course--but not alone. Good-bye--and thank you a thousand, thousand times for all your goodness to me and to my father.” She held out her hands, but he did not see them. “Good-bye! God bless you, darling!” he said, in a broken voice, and in the next moment Lucy Alford left the room. Mr. Desmond sighed, a heavy sigh; and when he removed his hand from before his face, that pale watcher behind the fern saw that his cheeks were wet with tears. For some minutes--slow, painful minutes to the watcher--he sat meditating gloomily; and then he too departed, with a listless step, by one of the windows opening on the lawn. “O God!” thought the watcher, who had sunk back helpless, motionless, against the angle of the wall, “am _I_ the only wretch upon earth? These two think it very little to sacrifice themselves for me; and yet I cannot let him go--I cannot let him go.” She came out from her lurking-place into the drawing-room, and seated herself by the table at which Laurence had been sitting; and here she sat with hands clasped before her face, thinking of what she had heard. Unspeakable had been the pain of that revelation; but the blow had not been unexpected. For some time she had suspected Laurence Desmond’s regard for Lucy; for a very long time she had perceived the decline of his affection for herself. “It is my own fault,” she thought; “I harassed and worried him with my wicked jealousy. I made myself a perpetual care and trouble to him: can I wonder that I lost his love? Oh, if I could learn to be generous, if I could be only reasonable and just, if I could let him go! But I cannot, I cannot!”