Jack saw it, too, and his hopes grew weak, for he believed he was already worsted; and he saw, with an inward yearning, the vision of all the happy, careless, sunny days at Omeath passing slowly and surely away. “What should he do?” he asked, “and where should he go?” His two devoted aunts noticed there was something wrong later on, before separating for the night, and in Miss Jane’s bedroom, they asked each other anxiously. “What is it?—what is wrong with our boy?” Miss Mary having the greater intuition, was the first to offer a solution. “Can it be Eileen?” she asked with dread—“Eileen and Lawrence Blake?” They looked into each other’s eyes with a sudden sense of awakening. “Surely not—” murmured Miss Jane, but her face belied her words. “Oh, sister,” breathed little tender-hearted Miss Mary, “if it is true he will suffer so. I can’t bear to think of our boy suffering,” and two big tears gathered in her eyes. “Don’t fret, sister,” said Miss Jane bravely, blinking back a suspicious moisture in her own eyes, “I don’t think it can have gone far enough for that. You see we have lately somehow associated Eileen and Lawrence, and Jack, of course, knew, so he would be guarded against caring too much. Probably it is just the sudden realisation that a change must come over their old happy life, and he will quickly get accustomed to it. There is still Paddy, and I have always hoped so—” she paused, and then concluded with a little smile, “What a dear, wild, irresponsible pair they would make!” Across at The Ghan House, in a room from which a bright light shone through the trees, in view of Jack’s window, the two other sisters were taking off their pretty dresses, and preparing to slip into their two dainty little white beds. Now and then they laughed over something that had happened at the ball, but for the most part Eileen was dreamy and Paddy preoccupied. “Was Lawrence very nice to-night?” asked the latter at last, longing to know what had transpired. “Yes,” Eileen answered simply. Paddy looked round suddenly and opened her lips to speak, but something in her sister’s face held her back. She was going to ask if he had told her about going to India, but realising how it might hurt Eileen if he had not, she changed her mind. “I can’t—I can’t,” she said to herself. “She looks so happy. I can’t damp it; if he has been playing with her, I will kill him—kill him—kill him,” and she clenched her hands together and tumbled into bed, forgetting for the time her own trouble in her wrath against Lawrence. CHAPTER XVI The First Awakening. It was through her father, a few days later, that Eileen first heard of Lawrence’s plans. He came blustering in from his usual daily walk one morning and exclaimed: