There was another long pause, and tears rolled slowly down Eileen’s white cheeks. “I wish I could think that you were happy,” he said painfully. “It makes things worse going away and feeling that you are breaking your heart. It isn’t as if he were worth it. I don’t even think he could make you happy if he tried; he’s too set in his own ways and opinions.” “Don’t, Jack, please,” she said. “It is better not to bring any other name into our talk.” “I am sorry. Forgive me. Only it’s so much more terrible than you can know. It’s like a raging fire in one’s heart to feel as I do about it all. Only it does not make any difference to my feelings for you, and I do not think it ever will, even if you marry him. In any case I want you to feel that I am your slave wherever I am, and that nothing would be too much to ask me to do for you. I shall hear of all that happens from the aunties, and, perhaps, Paddy will write if she has time, and after a few years I shall come back to see you all.” He stood up, and there was a new look of determination in his handsome, boyish face. “I mean to try and make up for all the time I have wasted,” he said, “and prove that there is some good stuff in me yet.” “Oh, Jack! you know we all think the world of you,” she urged. “I know you have all combined to spoil me ever since I was a little chap,” with a wistful smile, “and I guess it was about time Mother Fate took me by the shoulders, so to speak, and pushed me out into the cold. “She seems to have started off with the hardest blows first though,” he added. “It just feels like a clean sweep of everything I cared for most. To-morrow I must tell the aunts. I keep putting it off, because I can’t bear to begin, but it won’t make it any easier in the end. I think I’ll go for a tramp now. Trudging over the mountains helps a little and I feel—oh! I feel as if nothing in heaven or earth mattered much because of you, Eileen,” and he ground his teeth together to keep his self-command. A second later, feeling himself giving way, he strode across the room, and, passing out, closed the door quietly behind him. Eileen rested her arms on the table, and leaning her tired head down upon them, sobbed her heart out in the old library. That was the night Jack went up to his room and shut himself in without appearing at the supper-table, and the two little ladies clasped each other’s hands in mutely questioning distress, vaguely conscious that some new blow was about to fall. The next evening he told them.