That calm delight which Lucius Davoren had hitherto felt in the society of his betrothed, and his happy expectation of a prosperous future to be shared with her, were now clouded over with new doubts and fears. His mind had been weighed down by the burden of a dreadful secret, from the moment of that discovery which had showed him that the man he had killed and the father of the girl who loved him were one and the same. Those calm clear eyes which looked at him so tenderly sometimes wounded him as keenly as the bitterest reproach. Had she but known the fatal truth—she who had always set the memory of her father above her affection for himself—could he doubt the result of that knowledge? Could he doubt that she would have turned from him with abhorrence, that she would have shrunk with loathing from the lightest touch of his blood-stained hand? Vain would have been all argument, all attempt to justify his act, with the daughter who clung with a romantic fondness to her lost father’s image. ‘You killed him.’ She would have summed up all arguments in those three words. ‘You killed him. If he was wicked, you gave him no time for repentance; you cut him off in the midst of his sin. Who made you his judge: who made you his executioner? He was a sinner like yourself, and you thrust yourself between God and His infinite mercy. You did more than slay his body; you robbed him of redemption for his sin.’ He could imagine that this girl, clinging with unreasonable love to that dead sinner’s memory, would argue somewhat in this wise; and he felt himself powerless to reply. These thoughts weighed him down, and haunted him even in the company of his beloved. Yet, strange to say, Lucille did not remark the difference in her lover, and it remained for Lucius to perceive a change in her. His own preoccupation had rendered him less observant than usual, and he was slow to mark this alteration in Lucille’s manner, but the time came when he awakened to the fact. There was a change, indefinable, indescribable, but a change which he felt vaguely, and which seemed to grow stronger day by day. The thought filled him with a sudden horror. Did she suspect? Had some circumstance, unnoticed by him, led the way to the discovery he most dreaded, to the revelation of that secret he hoped to hide from her for ever? Surely no. Her hand did not shrink from his, the kiss he pressed upon that pure young brow evoked no shudder. Whatever the trouble was that had wrought this change in her, paled the fair cheek and saddened the sweet eyes, the perplexity or the sorrow was in herself, and had no reference to him.