"Si, Señor." "It is well," he said, and retreated inside the room. "You have received bad news!" exclaimed Madame de Castella, when he reappeared. "I have," he said, with controlled emotion. "I must depart instantly for England." And it was well the shades of evening were gathering, or they would inevitably have seen the death-like pallor on Adeline's stricken face. Mr. St. John handed them the letter to read. A dangerous accident had happened to his mother. The horses of her carriage took fright, and she opened the door and jumped out. The physicians feared concussion of the brain. "Are you going?" exclaimed M. de Castella, as St. John held out his hand. "Yes. I feel every moment wasted that does not speed me on my journey." And in another instant he was gone. Without a word more of adieu to Adeline than he gave to the rest. There was no opportunity for it. "I don't know that I would have angered him, had I foreseen this," cried Rose, candidly, as she lingered on the terrace with Adeline. "_Did_ you anger him?" "I think I did. A little bit. He should not have dared me to it." Adeline looked over the balustrades as she listened, seeing nothing. A painful question was upon her lips; but her poor sensitive heart--how unfit it was for the wear and tear of life!--beat so violently that she had to wait before she put it. "What you said was not _true_, Rose?" "What did I say?" rejoined Rose, whose thoughts had veered to fifty other things in her light carelessness. "That he loved--what was the name?--Sarah Beauclerc." The pretty assumption of forgetfulness! "What was the name?" As if the name, every distinct letter of it, had not engraved itself on her brain in letters of fire, when it was first spoken! Rose answered impulsively. "It was quite true, Adeline. He knows that it is true. I as certainly believed that he loved her, as that we are standing here. People say she would have been his wife before this, but for the dispute, or estrangement, or whatever it is, between him and his brother. He can't marry until his debts are cleared: and he is living quietly to clear them. You should hear what Margaret says about it; she told me a great deal the very day before I came here." Her crushed heart fluttered against her side. "She is nice-looking, you say?" "Nice-looking! she's beautiful! One of the loveliest girls in society. A fair, proud face, just as proud as his own. Georgina Beauclerc is very pretty; but she's nothing beside her." She could have cried aloud in her anguish as she listened to these praises of her rival: and how she schooled her voice to maintain its calm indifference, she knew not. "Who is Georgina Beauclerc?"