"The only lady in England honoured with my correspondence," said he, in a more serious tone than he had hitherto spoken, "is Mrs. St. John." "That's almost true," cried the provoking girl--"almost. She is not Mrs. St. John yet, only _to be_." A strange wild spasm caught Adeline de Castella's heart. Would Rose have continued, had she known it? Did St. John suspect it? "I spoke of my mother, Rose," he said. "She is the only lady who claims, or receives, letters from me." "Honour bright?" asked Rose. "Honour bright," repeated Mr. St. John: "the honour of her only son." "Oh, faithless that you are then!" burst forth Rose. "Will you deny that there is one in England to whom your letters are due, if not sent; one whose shadow you were for many, many months--if not years--one, beautiful as a painters dream?" "Bah, Rose!" he said, his lips curling with a proud, defiant smile, "you are lapsing into ecstasies." "Shall I tell her name--the name of his own true lady-love?" asked Rose, turning round, a world of triumph on her bright, laughing brow. "Mary Carr knows it already." "You are out of your senses!" exclaimed Mary Carr, all too eagerly. "Don't impose your fabulous tales on us." "Shall I tell it?" repeated Rose, maintaining her ground and her equanimity. "Tell it," said Mr. St. John, carelessly. Did he think she knew so much! "Tell it," repeated Adeline, but it was the motion of the syllables, rather than the words, that came from between her white and parted lips. "Sarah Beauclerc." A transient surprise crossed Mr. St. John's countenance, and was gone again. _Adeline saw it_: and from that wild, bitter moment, a pang of anguish took root within her, which was never to be erased during life. "You are under a slight misapprehension, Rose," said Mr. St. John, with indifference. "Am I? The world was under another, perhaps, when it asserted that the honour of Mr. St. John's hand would fall to Sarah Beauclerc." "That it certainly was--if it ever did assert it. And I might believe it possible, were the world peopled with Rose Darlings." "Look here," exclaimed Rose, snatching his pocket-handkerchief from a gilt cage, where he had thrown it to protect the beautiful bird from the rays of the setting sun. "Look at this, 'Frederick St. John,' worked in hair!" It happened to be the handkerchief they had picked up that first morning in the painting-room. Rose talked on, in the recklessness of her spirits; and Adeline sat, drinking-in her words. "_She_ did this for him, I have not the least doubt. Look how elaborately it is worked, even to the finishings of the crest. It is her hair, Sarah Beauclerc's." A random assertion. Rose neither knew nor cared whether she was right. In her present humour she would have stood to anything. It is possible: not likely, but barely possible: that she had stumbled on a bit of fact. Mr. St. John remained supremely indifferent, denying nothing. She talked on in her access of gaiety.