"This is his favourite handkerchief: I have noticed that. The others are marked with ink. I dare say she _gave_ the handkerchief, as well as marked it. Let it alone, Mr. St. John: I shall show it round, if I like. A rather significant present from so lovely a girl! But it's known she was _folle_ after him. He reciprocated the compliment then: he was always at the dean's. I don't know how it may be now," she added, after a pause, and there was a significant meaning in her tone as she looked to Adeline. Then, with a saucy glance at Mr. St. John, she sang out, in her clear, rich voice, to a tune of her own, "It is well to be off with the old love, Before you are on with the new." Adeline rose, and passed quietly into the drawing-room, her step self-possessed, her bearing calm: the still exterior covers the deepest suffering. But Mr. St. John suspected nothing. "Rose," he said, quoting a French axiom, "vous aimez bien à rire, mais rien n'est beau que le vrai." "Ah," she answered, with another, "ce n'est pas être bien aise que de rire." Perhaps the deepest truth she had uttered that evening. With outward calmness _there_, but oh! the whirlwind of despairing agony which shook Adeline's frame as she sank down by the bedside in her own chamber! That in one short minute, desolation so complete should have swept over her heart, and she be able to endure it and live! I tell you no false story: I am writing of one of those sensitive hearts which must thus suffer and be shaken. To have given up her whole love to one, in a passion little short of idolatry; to have forgotten early ties and kindred in the spell of this strong devotion--and now to be told there was _another_ to claim his vows, another to whom they had first been offered! The dream in which she had been living for months was over--or, at least, it had been robbed of its golden colouring. The serpent DOUBT had found its entrance into her heart: the fiend JEALOUSY had taken possession of it, never to be wholly eradicated. Frederick St. John was certainly one of earth's favoured people, with his manly beauty and his master intellect. It seemed to her that the world might worship him without a blush. He had made her life the Elysium that poets tell of; and now she found that he loved, or had loved, another. Like an avalanche falling down the Alps and crushing the hapless traveller, so had these tidings fallen upon her heart, and _shattered_ it. Adeline de Castella smoothed her brow at last, and returned downstairs. She had taken no account of the time; but, by the advanced twilight, it would seem she had been away an hour, and Rose inquired whether she had been buried. Following Adeline on to the colonnade, where the whole party were now seated, came the old Spanish servant, Silva, bearing a letter for Mr. St. John. The ominous words, "très pressée," written on it, had caused Madame Baret to despatch it with haste to the château. "Does any one wait?" he inquired.