There was one face for which Geraldine looked in vain, and had looked for many long weary weeks. Why she so desired to see that face, she could scarce have told; yet thus it was. But it never came. She asked questions now and again of some young beau who had lived in Lord Sandford’s world; but it was little she could learn of what she so much wished. "Oh, Sir Grey and my Lord Sandford had a quarrel. None know the cause, but they say ’twas about a woman. I know naught of it. But they parted company; and belike he has gone off to the wars, for none of us have set eyes upon him since the day when he lost the race, and went near to lose his life." "How was that?" Geraldine had asked with whitening lips. Then she had heard, with sundry embellishments, the story of the race, and the suspicions which had been aroused as to whether or not a trap had been laid for the young baronet, into which he had fallen, and had only escaped severe injury by a happy chance. Geraldine’s heart had been filled with horror. "Think you that Lord Sandford had a hand in it?" had been her whispered question, to which a careless laugh was the answer. She gathered from more than one source that his companions believed Lord Sandford quite capable of such a deed; for he had the reputation of being a man good as a friend, but bad to quarrel with, and absolutely unscrupulous when his passions were roused. None would ever answer for what he might do. A great horror had fallen upon Geraldine at hearing this tale—a horror which haunted her still after all these weeks. She could not forget how Lord Sandford had come upon her and Grey in the gardens of Vauxhall, and how he had spoken in a stern voice, and had carried her off with an air of mastery that she had been unable to resist. And almost immediately after this had come the quarrel—which men said was about a woman—and the disappearance of Sir Grey Dumaresq from the world which had known him. Her heart often beat fast and painfully as she mused on these things. Had he not promised her to give up that idle life, that gaming and dissipation which in their hearts they both despised? And he had kept his promise. He had broken loose from his fetters. He might now be living a life of honourable purpose elsewhere. But she had hoped to see and know more of him. She had not thought of his exiling himself altogether. True, if Lord Sandford were his foe, and such a dangerous one to boot, it were better he should be far away. And yet she longed to see him again, to hear his voice, to know how it went with him. Oft-times in the midst of such gay scenes as the one before her eyes her thoughts would go roving back to that golden summer morning when he had come to her upon the shining river; and she would rehearse in her memory every word that had passed, whilst her eyes would grow dreamy, and her lips curve softly, and her whole face take an expression which was exquisite in its tenderness and purity.