"A strange thing has happened," he said. "I only heard of it a few minutes ago: a man rode after me with the telegram. My cousin George--Lord Eildon--has fallen down a crevasse in the Alps and been killed. Only a week ago I parted with him full of life and spirit, and I loved him as if he had been my brother;" and he bent his head to hide tears. They were all silent for some moments: then in a low voice Lady Arthur said, "I am sorry for his father." "I am sorry for them all," George said. "It is terrible;" then after a little he said, "You'll excuse my leaving you: I am going to Eildon at once: I may be of some service to them. I don't know how Frank will be able to bear this." After he had gone away Alice felt how thoroughly she was nothing to him now: there had been no sign in his manner that he had ever thought of her at all, more than of any other ordinary acquaintance. If he had only looked to her for the least sympathy! But he had not. "If he only knew how well I understand him now!" she thought. "It is a dreadful accident," said Lady Arthur, "and I am sorry for the duke and duchess." She said this in a calm way. It had always been her opinion that Lord Arthur's relations had never seen the magnitude of _her_ loss, and this feeling lowered the temperature of her sympathy, as a wind blowing over ice cools the atmosphere. "I think George's grief very genuine," she continued: "at the same time he can't but see that there is only that delicate lad's life, that has been hanging so long by a hair, between him and the title." "Lady Arthur!" exclaimed Alice in warm tones. "I know, my dear, you are thinking me very unfeeling, but I am not: I am only a good deal older than you. George's position to-day is very different from what it was a year ago. If he were to write to you again, I would advise another kind of answer." "He'll never write again," said Alice in a tone which struck the ear of Lady Arthur, so that when the young girl left the room she turned to Miss Adamson and said, "Do you think she really cares about him?" "She has not made me her confidante," that lady answered, "but my own opinion is that she does care a good deal for Mr. Eildon." "Do you really think so?" exclaimed Lady Arthur. "She said she did not at the time, and I thought then, and think still, that it would not signify much to George whom he married; and you know he would be so much the better for money. But if he is to be his uncle's successor, that alters the case entirely. I'll go to Eildon myself, and bring him back with me." Lady Arthur went to Eildon and mingled her tears with those of the stricken parents, whose grief might have moved a very much harder heart than hers. But they did not see the state of their only remaining son as Lady Arthur and others saw it; for, while it was commonly thought that he would hardly reach maturity, they were sanguine enough to believe that he was outgrowing the delicacy of his childhood.