Madeline went up-stairs to the drawing-room with a beating heart. She thought, like her father, that Gervase had thrown off all softer feelings in the shock of family downfall and overthrow. What so likely to stun and paralyse a young man with a strong sense of honour, and with that innate conviction of personal superiority to all rebuffs and slights of fortune which an English youth’s education gives! Poverty would not have hurt him; but this mingling of doubt and mystery and intricate confusing business, the perhaps undeserved applauses of which his father had been the object for his partial just dealing, the certainly undeserved suspicion and blame of which he had himself been the object for completing that justice, the sense of the foundations of the earth shaken, and the ground failing under his feet, which such revelations are apt to bring,--all these things were enough, and more than enough, to upset the fine balance of a mind more delicate than strong. It had never appeared that Gervase was strong. His fastidiousness, and what had appeared, even to Madeline, over-delicacy in respect to the business, augured but little fortitude to resist actual calamity. She had in her own heart, with a pang which there was no possibility of ignoring, come to much the same conclusion as her father, that Gervase’s love had not been robust enough to withstand the change of all his other conditions. She did not, indeed, believe, nor did Mr Thursley believe, that any interested motive would induce Gervase to pretend a sentiment which no longer existed. But she waited with little doubt as to what he would say to her when he came, with a faint hope indeed still flickering at the bottom of her heart, but no expectation that she could feel to be reasonable. He would tell her, she had little doubt, that he was going away to the ends of the earth, perhaps back to the West Indies, perhaps to America, where he had made so many friends. It was a warm evening, only half dark: the windows were all open, the spacious room scarcely lighted, in a soft twilight fit for the talk of lovers, not very fit, Madeline felt, for the sterner communication which she looked for. She flitted about like a ghost in her white dress, hesitating whether she should not light candles or ring for additional lamps. She was still doubting when Gervase came up-stairs. She could hear him coming up, unaccompanied by any servant, and with a quickened step, which made her heart beat still more quickly. The stillness of the room, the faint light, and her evident solitude, which made her afraid, gave Gervase courage. “Madeline, you are waiting for me?” he said. “Surely, Gervase--I hoped--that you were sure to come.” “You might have known I would come.” He made her sit in the chair where he had throned her so often, and drew a lower one to her feet. “Thank heaven that at last I have you to myself! And thank heaven it is all over and done with, this horrible business that has stood between us!”