"Your correspondent laboured under a mistake, Rose; you may tell her so, for her satisfaction. Sarah Beauclerc will very soon be a wife, but not mine." "Who is she going to marry?" "Lord Raynor." Rose exhausted her surprise in ejaculations. She had thought Sarah Beauclerc would be Frederick St. John's chosen wife; had felt utterly certain of it in her own mind. He sat in silence, never heeding her. Remembrances of the past were crowding upon him. That he had been very near loving Sarah Beauclerc, was indisputable: and but for the meeting with Adeline, this might have come to fruition: there was no knowing now. At Lady Revel's--the evening spoken of to Rose by Miss Mary Anne Darling--he had learnt that she, Sarah, was going to be married to the Viscount Raynor, a man who, as Captain Budd, had been attached to her for years. She herself told him of this. In her calm, cold, cutting manner, she spoke of _his_ contemplated marriage to Mademoiselle de Castella: was any covert reproof intended in this? any secret intimation that _that_ justified her own engagement? However that might be, all chance of their being one in this world, had any such chance ever existed, was at an end; and Frederick St. John had no regret left in regard to it. All his regrets were for another. "If Adeline had but known it!" murmured Rose, genuine tears of vexation filling her eyes. "Did you not know she was dying, Mr. St. John?" "No. I knew nothing about her." "Have you been in England ever since you quitted us that day?" "I went straight to London from Beaufoy, saw my brother Isaac, explained matters to him, and then accompanied him to Castle Wafer. Subsequently I went to Scotland, deer-stalking; running over once to London from thence, to see my mother. Before Christmas, I was again for a week in London, and then I escorted my mother to Castle Wafer. Now you know what my movements have been, Rose. I heard nothing of Adeline." "Perhaps you kept yourself out of the way of hearing of her?" "I did." "That was your temper!" "Just so. Our faults generally bring their own punishment." "We heard you were in an awful passion at Madame Baret's," remarked Rose, who plunged into things irrelevant without mercy. "I thought I had cause to be. I thought so then. I do not know the reason now why she rejected me." "Mary Carr will tell you that. Ill-fated Adeline! She would have given her poor life to have been allowed to whisper it to you then, to justify herself in your eyes. The fact is," added Rose, after a pause, "the Church interfered to prevent the marriage, and Adeline was sworn to silence on the crucifix. _I_ did not know it until today. She thought of you until the last, Mr. St. John, and in her dying moments got permission from her father for the truth to be disclosed to you. Mary was charged with it." Mr. St. John's eyes blazed up with an angry light. "Then I know that was the work of Father Marc!"