This valorous determination taken, the poor maid servant's dream was broken by the opening of the parlor door, and an outcry of Ascott's for his coat and gloves, he having to fetch his aunts home at nine o'clock, Mr. Lyon accompanying him. And as they all stood together at the front door, Elizabeth overheard Mr. Lyon say something about what a beautiful night it was. "It would do you no harm, Miss Hilary; will you walk with us?" "If you like." Hilary went up stairs for her bonnet and shawl; but when, a minute or two after, Elizabeth followed her with a candle, she found her standing in the centre of the room, all in the dark, her face white and her hands trembling. "Thank you, thank you!" she said mechanically, as Elizabeth folded and fastened her shawl for her--and descended immediately. Elizabeth watched her take, not Ascott's arm, but Mr. Lyon's, and walk down the terrace in the starlight. "Some'at's wrong. I'd like to know who's been a-vexin' of her," thought fiercely the young servant. No, nobody had been "a-vexing" her mistress. There was nobody to blame; only there had happened to Hilary one of those things which strike like a sword through a young and happy heart, taking all the life and youth out of it. Robert Lyon had, half an hour ago, told her--and she had had to hear it as a piece of simple news, to which she had only to say, "Indeed!"--that to day and to-morrow were his two last days at Stowbury--almost his last in England. Within a week he was to sail for India. There had befallen him what most people would have considered a piece of rare good fortune. At the London University, a fellow student, whom he had been gratuitously "coaching" in Hindostanee, fell ill, and was "thrown upon his hands." as he briefly defined services which must have been great, since they had resulted in this end. The young man's father--a Liverpool and Bombay merchant--made him an offer to go out there, to their house, at a rising salary of 300 rupees a month for three years; after the third year to become a junior partner; remaining at Bombay in that capacity for two years more. This he told to Hilary and Ascott in almost as few words as I have here put it--for brevity seemed a refuge to him. It was also to one of them. But Ascott asked so many questions that his aunt needed to ask none. She only listened, and tried to take all in, and understand it, that is, in a consecutive, intelligent, business shape, without feeling it. She dared not let herself feel it, not for a second, till they were out, arm-in-arm, under the quiet winter stars. Then she heard his voice asking her, "So you think I was right?" "Right?" she echoed mechanically. "I mean in accepting that sudden chance, and changing my whole plan of life. I did not do it--believe me--without a motive." "What motive?" she would once unhesitatingly have asked; now she could not.