"I shall not need the hour," answered Rand. "I will be gone presently. God knows, sir, I had not thought to go this way." He turned from his host and bent for a moment over Jacqueline. "Good-bye," he said. "Good-bye for a little while! My heart is in your hands. I trust you for constancy. Good-bye--good-bye!" He was gone, moving rapidly toward the house. Colonel Churchill drew a long sigh, wiped his face with his handkerchief, and looked miserably up to the green boughs where the mockingbird was singing. He wished again for Edward, and he wished that Henry had not died. He believed in Heaven, and he knew that Henry was there, but then the thought came into his mind that Henry was here, too, in the person of his child, prone on the summer-house steps. Henry, also, had been a man of his word, had known his own mind, and exercised his will. There, too, had been the veil of sweetness! The Colonel sighed more heavily, wished again impatiently for Edward, then marched to the summer-house, and, sitting down, began to reason with Henry's daughter. Rand passed through the Fontenoy garden, in his heart a pain that was triumph, an exaltation that was pain. Mounting the porch steps, he found himself in the presence of Major Edward playing Patience in the shade of the climbing rose. The player started violently. "I thought, sir," he said, wheeling in his chair, "I thought you yet in the blue room! How the deuce!--I was on guard--" the Major caught himself. "I was waiting to renew our very interesting discussion. Where have you been?" "I have been in the garden," said Rand. He hesitated, standing by the table. There was a debate in his mind. "Should I speak to him, too? What is the use? He'll be no kinder to her!" He put out his hand uncertainly, and touched one of the Major's cards. "Is it an interesting game?" "I find it so," answered the other dryly. "Else I should not play it." "Why do you like it? It is poor amusement to play against yourself." "I like it, sir," snapped the Major, "because I am assured of playing against a gentleman." Rand let his hand fall from the table. "Major Churchill, I am leaving Fontenoy immediately. Perhaps I ought to tell you what I have just told your brother: I love Miss Churchill--" The Major rose from his chair. "Have you spoken to her?" "Yes, I have asked her to marry me." "Indeed!" said the Major huskily. "May I ask what Miss Churchill replied?" "Miss Churchill loves me," answered Rand. "She will do what I wish." The silence grew painful. The words, acid and intolerable, that Rand expected, did not seem to come easily to the Major's dry lips. He looked small, thin, and frozen, grey and drawn of face, as though the basilisk had confronted him. When at last he spoke, it was in a curiously remote voice, lucid and emotionless. "Well, why not? All beliefs die--die and rot! A vain show--and this, too, was of the charnel!"