Unaware of all this scene, Falconer, even in the face of his approaching departure, was chatting away gaily with Annabelle Erroll, and having the full assurance of Mary's love, seemed to tread on air, and feel emotions only of gratitude and joy. He was as sure that Mary was not a girl to love lightly as he was sure that she had given her whole heart to him, despite the fiat, the 'general order' of Sir Piers, that was to assign her as a bride to Hew Montgomerie. When the little circle assembled for dinner, the last of which he was to partake in Eaglescraig, Cecil became suddenly and painfully sensible that some change had come over all present, save Miss Erroll. Though all were scrupulously polite, their old cordiality seemed to have evaporated! Hew was colder than ever; not that Cecil Falconer cared much for that, but he felt that the usually chatty and genial Sir Piers was cold in manner too, and haughty and monosyllabic, for a time; and Cecil recalled the cordial welcome of his first night in that hospitable mansion, when his old host insisted on escorting him to 'his quarters,' as he called his room, singing his old Indian song about 'half-batta' as they went. He felt the change keenly, and angrily too, all the more that he failed to understand it. 'What the deuce does the general suspect--what does he know?' thought Cecil, whose own suspicions certainly pointed towards Hew; but he and Mary were without the means of comparing notes together, or even of taking of each other the tender farewell they would have wished. At table--with the memory of all that had passed in the library--she was nervous, silent and reserved, while she kept listening to the voice and looking furtively in the eyes that as secretly sought hers--the voice and eyes she had been bidden to forget as those of 'the forgotten dead.' When the ladies withdrew, the general, who was the soul of hospitality, when pushing the decanters round--for he was vain of his clarets, Chateau Lafitte, Haut Brion, and Margaux--felt half inclined to relax and relent at times. Could Hew have been mistaken in that diabolical story about the cards? But if so, he was not mistaken on the subject of Falconer's admiration of his intended wife: and though such was utterly adverse to the wish of Sir Piers, he felt that he could forgive it, especially as, like Mrs. Garth, he felt that in the look and air, the expression of face, and bearing of Cecil Falconer, there were an undefinable something that brought painfully back to memory the face of another; and yet, between the two faces, that of his dead son--for his it was--and the face of Falconer, there was no especial likeness. 'Had poor Piers been living now, thought the general, 'he would have been nearly fifty years of age, which reminds me that I am getting too old to harbour thoughts of anger now.'