"More than I ever missed any one in my whole life before," was the answer on Queenie's lips, but she prudently forbore to utter it, as she moved again by his side in the darkness. Did no warning monitor within her whisper that this man was growing dangerously dear to her; that the snare was already spread for her unconscious feet? "He means to marry Dora; but I have a right to claim him still as my friend. No one shall steal his friendship from me. I will have what belongs to me," she had said to herself, almost fiercely; but the falseness of the sophistry was glossed over and hidden from her eyes. For the last few days a great sadness had crept over her. Since the evening Dora had passed through the little gate, and had walked with him up and down in the sunset, some visionary hope, baseless and unsubstantial as a dream, had vanished from her heart. Of what avail was her idle whim now? Would it not have been better, so she told herself, to have shaken off the dust of Hepshaw from her feet? Whose blame was it if she had tangled her own life? Some impulse, some undefinable influence, had drawn her to weave these strange plans of hers; more than a girl's fancy and love of mystery and adventure were wrapped up in them. But might it not be that bitter failure and remorse should be her portion hereafter? Would there not have been greater peace and safety for her in that house in Carlisle? Queenie asked herself these questions with a sigh long after she had left Garth, and retired to her own room, where Emmie was slumbering peacefully. She kissed the child, and placed herself under the shadow of the window-curtain, and watched, for the last time, the tiny red spark emerging every now and then from under the trees. "Miss him! he little knows how I shall miss him!" she said to herself, bitterly. "Right or wrong, he has got into my life, and I cannot get him out. Does he love Dora, I wonder? I cannot make up my mind; but he will marry her, for all that; and then, then, if I find it very hard to bear, if she will not let me keep him as a friend, we will go away, Emmie and I, somewhere a long way off, where I can have plenty of work, and forget, and begin afresh." But when Queenie came to this point she suddenly broke down; an oppressive sense of loneliness, as new as it was terrible, crushed on her with overwhelming force. For the first time Queenie's brave spirit seemed utterly broken, and some of the bitterest tears she ever shed wetted the child's pillow. As for Garth, he strolled on for a long time, placidly enjoying his cigar. He had delivered his little lecture, and had then sent the girl in soothed and comforted; so he told himself. It is true a sad and wistful glance from two large dark eyes somewhat haunted him at intervals, but he drove it persistently away.