The next day and the next brought the same result. She failed to meet him, and dismay filled his heart lest she might be ill. She was delicate and fragile, and the last night they met she was terribly shaken and excited by the untoward episode of the morning and her superstitious terror of the evening. From the moment Bevil Goring met and knew Alison Cheyne, his heart had gone out of his own keeping, and never returned to it again. His love for her had become deep and intense, but, strange to say, did not seem a hopeful one, unless fortune changed suddenly with him. It was useless to expect it would do so with her family now. His position was good; his family name unimpeachable. He bore a high reputation in his regiment as a brave and well-trained officer, and one well used to command; but his means were certainly not what he should ask a wife of Alison's culture to share, nor in any way were they equal to the ambition and dire necessities of the bankrupt baronet of Essilmont. After some more days of agonising delay and anxiety, Goring resolved to proceed to Chilcote House, and endeavour to discover if aught ailed Alison, or how it was that she had ceased to come to their meeting-place as usual. From the clustered and ivy-clad chimneys no smoke ascended against the grey November sky. Every window was shuttered and closed. There was an absence of all stir--an oppressive silence everywhere in and around the house--even from the little court where the clucking of Alison's hens was wont to be heard. A spade yet remained stuck in a plot of the garden, as if old silver-haired Archie Auchindoir had suddenly quitted his work there and returned no more. Either by the result of mischief, or recent neglect, a large mass of the ivy and clematis that overhung the pretty little oaken porch had fallen down, and, if further evidence of total desertion were necessary, a large white ticket on a pole announced in black letters that the 'commodious villa of Chilcote was to let, furnished or unfurnished. Communications to be made in writing to Mr. Solomon Slagg, St. Clement's Lane, City.' On taking in all these details of a sudden, hasty, and perhaps disastrous departure, the heart of Bevil seemed to stand still for some seconds. Where had the little household gone, and why? And why did not Alison write to him of her movements? though he could not have replied without compromising her. Was Sir Ranald dead? Was she? Oh, no! no! He must have heard it--friends in camp must have heard through the public prints of any catastrophe. She was gone--carried off; he could not doubt it--but whither and to what end he could not even surmise; his bower of roses--his fool's paradise, was levelled in the dust at last, and he could but linger, and look hopelessly and questioningly at the ticket of Mr. Solomon Slagg, and at the darkened windows through which Alison must often have looked, perhaps watching for his own approach.