As days passed on and became weeks, Mary's movements and manner became languid, and all her old occupations, if not neglected, were pursued with a weary indifference. She had lost interest even in being dressed to perfection, as she had always been, and spent hours in the seclusion of her own room, or exclusively in the society of Annabelle Enroll. Her eyes lost their clear brilliance and became heavy in expression; her usually gentle and playful manner was changed for petulance and irritability, all signs of where and how her thoughts were--signs which Hew watched with jealous rage, and loving, old Sir Piers with unaffected solicitude, mingled with bitterness at Falconer, and at himself for that which he now deemed his own fantastic idea of _camaraderie_ and old military hospitality. 'Never again,' he would mutter to himself, 'never again will I play the fool! Hew is right--Hew is right!' His pet from her orphan childhood, his artless, father-like experience of her, had, until quite recently, prevented him from remarking that she was no longer a baby-faced girl, but a grown woman--a bird that might leave him for another nest--and then a kind of nervous thrill went through his heart, when he thought a love for another might take possession of her; and thus he became doubly anxious to secure her for Hew. 'How pale and ill you look, my darling!' said Mrs. Garth to her, at the close of a day that had seemed a long and dreary one to Mary. 'What matters it?' said she, petulantly; 'Cecil cannot see me now,' she added mentally, as her eyes wandered through the window to the wooded walk that led to the grotto--the grotto where Cecil had first told her of his love, and where his lips had touched hers for the first and last time, and the host of tender recollections that hallowed the place flowed full upon her memory. 'Why are some people sent into this world only to be miserable!' sighed the lovely heiress, while surrounded by every luxury that world could furnish. 'I wonder if we ever lived before and were happy--or if we shall live again, and be happier still! Who can tell--who knows?' Then tenderly and fondly she recalled the words of Cecil, when he spoke to her of the mysterious sympathy that, in his solitary moments, had seemed to link his soul, or existence, with that of another, and could she doubt now that it was her own! And with this idea, a tender and loving expression would steal over her delicate _mignonne_ face. 'Rouse yourself, my darling,' Mrs. Garth would say, 'ride or drive--read or work.' 'Read--read! I hate books now--I hate crewel-work, music, everything!' she replied, almost snappishly; 'dear old Garthy, I am no longer a schoolgirl, and I never, at any time, was one cut to the Hannah More pattern.'