"Not at all, Newton." "But it makes you turn your face away." "You met often, I believe, before you came here?" "Oh, very often. I used to see her at the cathedral every Sunday in Canterbury; at the balls at Rochester and Maidstone——" "And in London?" "Repeatedly! I saw her at her first presentation at Court, when the colonel presented me, on obtaining my lieutenancy, and returning from foreign service. She created quite a sensation!" I spoke in such glowing terms of my admiration for Louisa Loftus, that some time elapsed before I detected the extreme pallor of Cora’s cheek, and a peculiar quivering of her under lip. "Good heavens, my dear girl, you are ill! It is this confounded cigar—one of a box that Willie got me in Dunfermline," I exclaimed, throwing it away. "Your hand is trembling, too." "Is it? Oh, no! Stay! I am only a little faint," she murmured. "Faint! Why the deuce should you be faint, Cora?" "This bower of yew hedges is close; the atmosphere is still, or chill, or something," she said, in a low voice, while pressing a lovely little hand on her bosom; "and it seems to me that I felt a pang here." "A pang, Cora?" "Yes, I feel it sometimes." "You, one of the best waltzers in the county! You have no affection of the heart, or any of that sort of thing?" She smiled sadly, even bitterly, and rose, saying— "Here comes Lady Louisa. Say nothing of this." Her dark eyes were swimming; but not a tear fell from their long, black, silky lashes, that lent such softness to her sweet and feminine face. She abruptly withdrew her tremulous hands from mine, and just as Louisa approached, hurriedly left me. What did all this emotion mean? What did it display or conceal? I was thoroughly bewildered. A sudden light began to break upon me. "What is this?" thought I. "Can Cora be in love with me herself? Oh, nonsense! she has known me from boyhood. The idea is absurd! Yet her manner——. This will never do. I must avoid her, and to-morrow I leave for England!" Louisa sat beside me, and, save her, Cora and all the world were alike forgotten. *CHAPTER XIII.* Forget thee? If to dream by night, and muse on thee by day; If all the worship, deep and wild, a poet’s heart can pay; If prayers in absence, breathed for thee to Heaven’s protecting power; If winged thoughts that flit to thee, a thousand in an hour; If busy Fancy, blending thee with all my future lot; If this thou call’st forgetting, thou, indeed, shall be forgot. MOULTRIE. I had but one, only one, meeting more with Lady Louisa, and it was, indeed, a sad one. We could but hope to meet again—near Canterbury, perhaps—at some vague period before my regiment marched; and prior to that I was to write to her, on some polite pretence, under cover to Cora.