'My dear, I am so glad,' returned Mildred in a reassured tone; 'never mind the trouble; trouble can be borne, so that you have done nothing wrong. But I feared I hardly know what, you looked and spoke so mysteriously; and then, remember we have heard nothing about you for so long--even Polly's letters have been unanswered.' 'Did she say so? did she mind it? What does she think, Aunt Milly?' 'She has not complained, at least to me, but she has looked very wistful I notice at post-time; once or twice I fancied your silence a little damped her happiness.' 'She is happy then? what an ass I was to doubt it,' he groaned; 'as though she could be proof against the fascinations of a man like Dr. Heriot; but oh! Polly, Polly, I never could have believed you would have thrown me over like this,' and Roy buried his face in his hands with a hoarse sob as he spoke. Mildred sat almost motionless with surprise. Strange to say, she had not in the least realised the truth; perhaps her own trouble had a little deadened her quick instinct of sympathy, or Roy's apparently brotherly affection had deceived her, but she had never guessed the secret of his silence. He had seemed such a boy too, so light-hearted, that she could hardly even now believe him the victim of a secret and hopeless attachment. And then the complication. Mildred smiled again, a little smile; there was something almost ludicrous, she thought, in the present aspect of affairs. Was it predestined that in the Lambert family the course of true love would not run smooth? Richard, refused by the woman he had loved from childhood, she herself innocent, but self-betrayed, wasting strangely under the daily torture she bore with such outward patience, and now Roy, breaking his heart for the girl he had never really wooed. 'Rex, dear, I have been very stupid, but I never guessed this,' waking up from her bitter reverie as another and another hoarse sob smote upon her ear. Poor lad, he had been right in asserting himself morally unfit to cope with any great trouble; weak and yet sensitive, he had succumbed at once to the blow that had shattered his happiness. 'Hush, you must hear this like a man for her sake--for Polly's sake,' she whispered, bending over him and trying to unclench his fingers. 'Rex, there is more than yourself to think about.' 'Is that all you have to say to me?' he returned, starting up; 'is that how you comfort people whose hearts are broken, Aunt Milly? How do you know what I feel, what I suffer, or how I hate him who has robbed me of my Polly? for she is mine--she is--she ought to be by every law, human and divine,' he continued, in the same frenzied voice. 'Hush, this is wrong, you must not talk so,' replied Mildred, in the firm soothing voice with which she would have controlled a passionate child. 'Sit down by me again, Rex, and we will talk about this,' but he still continued his restless strides without heeding her.