"Hulloa!" cried a voice "Cousin Julie is on the tenterhooks of impatience for you, Piermont. You are too late to open the ball with her. Oh, do I see Miss Walsingham?" Lieutenant Falconcourt joined the pair with looks of curiosity, and rendered his respects to my lady's companion. "Remain here a few moments, while I see Lady Juliana," said the young duke, hurriedly pressing her hand. In a moment he was gone, and Harry Falconcourt was in his place by her side. "My dear Miss Walsingham," he said, half gayly, but with a slight appearance of anxiety in his manner, which did not escape her notice, "do you know that you have cast a spell over our duke, which he seems inclined to wear under the very eyes of my Cousin Julie?" "You cannot surely mean----" "He is perfectly bewitched; and as I know you are quite unconscious of it, I fore warn you." Margaret sat silent for some time, plunged in an uneasy reverie. This thing gave her a disagreeable shock for which she was not prepared. She inwardly reviewed her position at Hautville Park, and a cold chill of disappointment crept into her heart. Must she leave her giddy darling, Lady Julie? "I cannot believe it--I will not!" she exclaimed, with momentary fire. "His grace is not so foolish as to intend this thing. You exaggerate his emotions in regard to me." The fairy-like form of my lady floated past the draperied door on the arm of Piermont, and as she passed, her eyes sought the pair in the cloister with visible triumph; then she turned to his grace again. "You see," said Margaret, eagerly clinging to the first straw of hope, "they perfectly understand each other, and your warning is superfluous." Falconcourt smiled, but dropped the subject, and applied himself with considerable relish to the task of entertaining my lady's companion. As long as she could see his grace, the duke, and Lady Juliana amicably promenading, or revolving in each other's arms, she spoke well and admirably, but the instant that they parted, she became quite _distrait_, and nervously dreaded the appearance of the duke. So agitated did she become with this threatened return before her eyes, that her face became white as chalk and her tones husky and indistinct. "Excuse me if I leave you," she said, at last, desperately. "I may return, if I overcome this faintness." She had just sufficient strength to slip through the outer door, of the cloister into the cool hall, and to make her way to a balcony, where night breezes swept crisply over her, and the upper edge of the round, red moon smote her face with the glow of one of Raphael's angels. There she stood, gazing down upon the dark trees, her heart a chaos of troubled reverie. "On the first of September, at the battle of Chantilly, it is feared." Voices of men in eager colloquy; two figures lounging on the terrace steps beneath. "Where did you see it?" "In the last _War Gazette_--Colonel Brand's company almost cut to pieces, and the colonel killed.