'I am thinking how to collect my ideas,' said he, in a broken voice; 'to reflect on my position, and the information you have given me, with the useful warning contained in it. In two or three days more my leave will be up, and I shall have, inexorably, to depart from a house in which the happiest moments of my life have been spent; yet, which I would to Heaven I had never entered!' Then, as he left her, Mrs. Garth felt that all her suspicions had been justified; yet, with him, she approached the subject no more. 'I have done the deed! as Macbeth says,' thought she, looking after him; 'poor fellow--poor dear fellow! He seems sorely cut up; but it is all for the best--all for the best! How sad his handsome face looked: and of _whom_ does that face remind me? My own dear boy's surely!' Cecil Falconer was full of jealous anger and deep mortification. He could not, in his present mood of mind, rejoin Mary Montgomerie, and so he took himself to the loneliest part of the garden to smoke and think--to have that universal panacea to all men in trouble, doubt, or difficulties--a mild 'weed.' Moreover, there is a solitude we are prone to seek at times, even amid our fondest affections. A tender love for Mary had grown in his heart; but--apart from a meagre exchequer--his lack of family rank was painfully thrust upon him now by every word Mrs. Garth had, he thought, unconsciously uttered. In his lonely hours, like most young men of imagination and of those given to day-dreaming, he had been wont--though well-nigh nameless--to identify himself with the 'Ivanhoes' of romance and history--the disinherited and disguised princes of boyish tales, and so forth, weaving out a brilliant future for himself! But now! Now, like Alnaschar in the Arabian tale, his basket of crystal was smashed; and yet he could have no future in which Mary Montgomerie was not to bear an imaginary part. He was aware that his family pretensions, when judged by the lofty heraldic and genealogical standards of Sir Piers Montgomerie, were as meagre as his monetary could be, and the double consciousness thereof, though failing to influence his heart, had almost utterly fettered his tongue. These were the reasons why Cecil Falconer did not declare himself as yet, or try conclusions with Hew Montgomerie, but now he had others--more solid and more cruel. It was, however, the old story of the moth and the candle. Mrs. Garth had done much to crush and damp all hope in the heart of Cecil, but could not prevent him from indulging in the perilous charm of Mary's society to the last hours of his now-expiring leave of absence--leave granted 'between returns,' as the technical phrase is.