Whatever the expression she had noticed on his countenance, she would have seen a very marked one now, had they been, as before, face to face near a table-lamp. The old haughty pride came into it, and his brow flushed blood-red. Oswald Cray was one of the very last to tolerate that his secret feelings should be observed or commented upon. As she spoke it seemed to him as if the pain at his heart was read, his hopeless love for Sara Davenal laid bare. "You are drawing a wrong inference, Miss Allister," he coldly said. "The friend I lost was neither near nor very dear to me. She was an old lady; a connection of my mother's family--Lady Oswald." Jane marked the changed tone. She concluded the loss _was_ one of pain to him, though he did not choose to say so, and she gathered her deductions that he was a man of great reticence of feeling. That he was a brave man and a good man, one in every way worthy of trust, of esteem, she knew from Frank long ago. "Why, Neal! Is it you?" Mr. Oswald Cray came to an abrupt halt in his surprise. Turning out of the door of a house that they were passing, so quickly as nearly to brush against him, was Dr. Davenal's manservant. Neal did not appear in the least taken to. He touched his hat and stood still with just the same equanimity that he would have done had he been waiting there for the passing of Mr. Oswald Cray. "What has brought you to London, Neal? You have surely not left Dr. Davenal?" "O no, sir, I have not left. A brother of mine, sir, has returned to England after an absence from it of many years, and a little property of ours, that couldn't be touched while he was away, is now being divided. I spoke to Dr. Davenal, and he gave me leave to come." "Have you been up long?" "Only three days, sir." "Are they all well at Hallingham?" "Quite well, sir. Mr. Cray hurt his arm as he was getting out of the doctor's carriage, and it was bound up for a week. But it is better." "How did he manage that?" "I don't think he knew, sir. His foot slipped as he was stepping out, and he swung round in some way, keeping hold of the carriage with his hand bent behind. It was rather a bad sprain." "Miss Davenal is quite well?" "Yes, sir. Miss Sara has had a cold lately, and is looking ill. The captain went abroad, sir, without coming to Hallingham, and they all felt it much." Oswald bade the man goodnight, and walked on. He did not care, in his fastidious sensitiveness, to hear the looks of Sara Davenal commented on. If she did look ill, was it for his, Oswald's, sake!--or was she haunted with that unhappy secret which Neal had once so darkly hinted at?