’I thank you. I will preserve it,’ said Mirelle, stiffly. ’For myself it will be needless, but I will recommend your firm to my acquaintances, and I hope obtain some orders.’ Herring looked puzzled. Mirelle took the card and twirled it in her fingers without glancing at it. She was annoyed with what she regarded as an impertinence. With a crash on the piano, a shriek from the flute, and a bellow from the bass viol, the symphony concluded. John Herring rose to depart. The musicians were engaged on their instruments. Captain Trecarrei was leaning over the piano, talking to Orange. As Herring rose, Mirelle rose also. She knew he was going to depart, and that, perhaps, for ever. She was relieved to think so. He ventured to hold out his hand. Purposely she avoided seeing it, but, raising her eyes, she looked him in the face. Wondrous, mysterious eyes they were. They dazzled Herring. This was the second time only that he had met her look. ’I am very anxious about your future, Countess.’ ’I pray you give it no thought. My future is in my own hands alone; it cannot concern you.’ She slightly curtseyed. Then there came a faint musical strain as on some reedy instrument stealing through the house. It was heard outside the door, in the hall, then it passed round the room and went on into Mr. Trampleasure’s office beyond; a strange music, distant yet near, so distant that the ear was sensible of an effort to hear it, yet so near that the vibration could be felt. The air played was familiar; a solemn, quaint old melody, associated with these words:— Since first I saw your face, I resolv’d To honour and renown you; If now I be disdain’d, I wish My heart had never known you. Orange turned pale. Old Tramplara was startled. Mirelle and Herring did not at first realise that this was the music that had been alluded to at table. Some moments elapsed before those in the room had recovered from their surprise sufficiently to speak, and then only Orange had the courage to refer to it. She turned sharply, almost fiercely, on Mirelle, and said, ’It is you—you! who have brought this on us.’ ’Brought what?’ Orange was too agitated to explain. ’I have told you what this means,’ she said. ’What have we here on the floor?’ asked Tramplara, in a shaking voice. ’A card,’ answered Mirelle. ’Mr. Herring’s address.’ She raised it and read:— ’Lieut. Herring, 25th Reg. Welltown, N. Cornwall.’ ’Why!’ she exclaimed, supremely shocked, ’he is an officer in the army, and I thought he was a _commis voyageur_ for some grocery or drapery business. Where is he?’ John Herring was gone. She had not even thanked him for what he had done for her, and he had done for her, and would do for her, far more than she knew. However proudly she may have resolved to hold her future in her own hands, that future was in his.