"It _was_ a mad freak," replied he, and without waiting for another word, or tendering an apology for his disordered dress, he strode away again, with the full determination of finding Frances. Every room below stairs he searched, but in vain; she was nowhere, and driven reckless by the agony of his thoughts he went straight up to her own room, and opened the door. She was lying on the sofa, her eyes red and swollen with weeping, passionate, hopeless tears at the thought that long before now he and Amy had met, and he consequently lost to herself for ever. "Charles!" she exclaimed, springing off the sofa, her cheeks flushing hotly with surprise and pleasure. But another glance at his face, and her heart sank within her, for its expression almost terrified her. He closed the door and came and stood opposite to where she was, looking as though he would have struck her. She quailed visibly before his menacing glance. Then resolutely regained the mastery over herself, and drawing up her figure proudly, she said, "Do you know this is my room? I wonder how you dare come here." "Your room? Well, what if it is, I care not," he replied. "I am reckless of everything." "But I am not; and--and," she hesitated, and tried again to steady her beating heart, "what--what has happened, Charles, that you look so strangely?" "Happened? Can you ask me what has happened, you who have wrecked the hopes of my whole life." "I, Charles? You talk in riddles; I do not understand you." "You dare not say that!" exclaimed he, hoarsely. "You know well that I loved her with all my heart and soul, and you--you schemed to draw her from me. I would have laid down my life for her; and you guessed it, and told me she loved another, and, like a fool, I believed you. You have driven me to despair; her to a life-long living death; and this, all this, I have dared to come and tell you." "It was no lie. She never loved you!" "She did!" he cried, hotly; "I swear she did. I saw it; knew it but a few hours since." "You have seen her?" asked Frances. "Seen her! Yes; and I wish to God I had died before seeing her," and he clasped his hands over his damp brow in an agony of grief. "See," he said, presently, "are you not satisfied with my sufferings? Look here;" and he drew his hand across his forehead and temples, and showed the large drops that fell from them. "I loved her as my life. My life, do I say? She was more than life to me, and I have lost her; and this--this is your devil's work." "Lost her!" echoed Frances, inquiringly. He heeded her not; but walked the room with rapid strides, then gradually calmed again, and then again burst forth with the hopeless agony of his thoughts, as he recalled Amy's last words: "_It is too late, I am married._" "Aye," he said, despairingly, "too late to save us both; too late, indeed."