Aileen Jocyln, roaming like a restless ghost through the lonely, lofty rooms, saw them alight, and came out to the hall to meet her betrothed. She held out both hands shyly, looking up, half in fear, in the rigid, death-white face of her lover. "Aileen!" He took the hands and held them fast a moment; then dropped them and turned to the colonel. "Now, Col. Jocyln." The colonel led the way into the library. Sir Rupert paused a moment on the threshold to answer Aileen's pleading glance. "Only for a few moments, Aileen," he said, his eyes softening with infinite love; "in half an hour my fate shall be decided. Let that fate be what it may, I shall be true to you while life lasts." With these enigmatical words, he followed the colonel into the library, and the polished oaken door closed between him and Aileen. CHAPTER XIV. PARTED. Half an hour had passed. Up and down the long drawing-room Aileen wandered aimlessly, oppressed with a dread of she knew not what, a prescience of evil, vague as it was terrible. The dark gloom of the rainy evening was not darker than that brooding shadow in her deep, dusky eyes. In the library Col. Jocyln stood facing his son-in-law elect, staring like a man bereft of his senses. The melancholy, half light coming through the oriel window by which he stood, fell full upon the face of Rupert Thetford, white and cold, and set as marble. "My God!" the Indian officer said, with wild eyes of terror and affright, "what is this you are telling me?" "The truth, Col. Jocyln--the simple truth. Would to Heaven I had known it years ago--this shameful story of wrong-doing and misery!" "I don't comprehend--I can't comprehend this impossible tale, Sir Rupert." "That is a misnomer now, Col. Jocyln. I am no longer _Sir_ Rupert." "Do you mean to say you credit this wild story of a former marriage of Sir Noel's? Do you really believe your late governess to have been your father's wife?" "I believe it, colonel. I have facts and statements and dying words to prove it. On my father's death-bed he made my mother swear to tell the truth; to repair the wrong he had done; to seek out his son, concealed by his valet, Vyking, and restore him to his rights! My mother never, kept that promise--the cruel wrong done to herself was too bitter; and at my birth she resolved never to keep it. I should not atone for the sin of my father; his elder son should never deprive _her_ child of his birthright. My poor mother! You know the cause of that mysterious trouble which fell upon her at my father's death, and which darkened her life to the last. Shame, remorse, anger--shame for herself--a wife only in name; remorse for her broken vow to the dead, and anger against that erring dead man." "But you told me she had hunted him up and provided for him," said the mystified colonel.