“Ah! then you cannot be a true Trevlyn. We Trevlyns have a strange forecasting power. Coming events cast their shadow over us, and we feel it—we feel it!” He had never seen her in this mood before. He was intensely interested. “And you have a presentiment, Lady Monica?” She bent her head, but did not speak. “And having said so much, will you not say more, and tell me what it is?” She stopped still, looked earnestly at him for a moment, and then passed her hand wearily across her face. “Sometimes I think,” she said, “that it will be the great sea, my childhood’s friend, that will bring to me the greatest sorrow of my life; for is it not the emblem of separation? Please take me in now. I think a storm is very sad and terrible.” He looked into her pale, sweet face, and perhaps there was something in his glance that touched her, for as they stood in the hall at last she looked up with a shadowy smile, and said: “Thank you very much. You have been very kind to me.” That smile and those few simple words were like a ray of sunlight in his path. CHAPTER THE SIXTH. IN PERIL. Perhaps there was some truth in what Monica had said about her ability to presage coming trouble. At least she was haunted just now by a strange shadow of approaching change that future events justified only too well. She often caught her father’s glance resting upon her with a strange, searching wistfulness, with something almost of pleading and appeal in his face. She had a suspicion that Arthur sometimes looked at her almost in the same way, as if he too would ask some favour of her, could he but bring his mind to do so. She felt that she was watched by all the household, that something was expected of her, and was awaited with a sort of subdued expectancy; but the nature of this service she had not fathomed, and greatly shrank from attempting to do so. She told herself many times that she would do anything for those she loved, that no sacrifice would be too great which should add to or secure their happiness; but she did not fully understand what was expected of her; only some instinct told her that it was in some way connected with Randolph Trevlyn. Sir Conrad Fitzgerald came from time to time to the Castle. He was cordially received by the Earl and Lady Diana, who had respected and liked his parents, and remembered him well as a fair-haired boy, the childish playfellow and friend of Monica and Arthur. Old feelings of intimacy sprang up anew after the lapse of time. It seemed as if he had hardly been more than a year or two away. It was difficult to realise that the young man was practically an entire stranger, of whose history they were absolutely ignorant.