"Think no more of it, Mademoiselle. I cannot say how glad I am that I happened to be able to serve you. Forgive me; you are worn out; it will not do to have another invalid, you know——" Adèle smiled in answer. "Yes, I will go to bed," she said, "and I do thank you for Mother and myself." She clasped his hands again, then ran from the room. Harry had never seen her so much moved. Hitherto she had always been so cold, so reserved, seeming to grudge the few words that courtesy demanded. Even when something claimed her active help, as in the stratagem by which Lindendaal had been saved from the raiders nearly eighteen months before, she had acted, indeed, with decision and courage, as a good comrade, but had at once relapsed into her former attitude of aloofness, almost disdain. With Fanshawe, on the contrary, she had been frank and gay, ready with quip and jest, gently correcting his French, merrily laughing at her own attempts to speak English, never wearying of accompanying on the harpsichord his west-country songs, which she quickly picked up by ear. Fanshawe was thoroughly in love with her—and Harry remembered with a pang that he bore a letter from Fanshawe to her mother, once more urging his suit. "Confound him!" he thought, and, his hands tight clasped behind him, he strode up and down the room with compressed lips and lowering brow. He had no doubt now of the relationship in which he stood to Fanshawe; he was both his rival and friend. He tried to face the situation calmly. Fanshawe was a good fellow, an officer in the English army, and heir to a baronetcy and a fine estate. He could sell out at any moment, and doubtless enjoy by the liberality of his father an income sufficient to maintain a wife in something more than comfort. It gave Harry a pang to contrast his own position. He had no property, no family influence, nothing beyond his pay and the income so generously allowed by Mynheer Grootz. True, he was now in the service of Prince Eugene, and the circumstances in which he had joined the Austrian service gave him a good prospect of ultimate advancement; but it might be many years before he could venture to ask a lady to share his fortunes. Besides, if Mademoiselle de Vaudrey was indeed heiress to an estate, as Simmons had reported, a poor man could not seek her hand without incurring the suspicion of being a fortune-hunter: the mere suggestion brought a hot flush to Harry’s cheeks. No; he could but stand aside. Fanshawe had failed once; he might yet succeed; and if it should so turn out, Harry could but wish his friend joy and go his way. "Heigh ho! Some fellows are lucky!" he thought, and, heaving a tremendous sigh, he went to bed.