'"I grieve for what you say; and God knows it is not so--but for the manner in which you reproached me with unwomanly conduct, that roused my proper pride. I did love you tenderly, purely, passionately, then; but in repelling you, my conduct at least is womanly now! Farewell then, for ever; we leave this place to-morrow." '"For where?" '"That can be a matter of no interest to you, Captain Fotheringhame," she replied, turning to retire. '"Do not let us part thus, Annabelle. It is for your sake as much as my own that I sue thus." 'She crested up her little head haughtily. '"Believe in my love," I urged. '"I neither believe in it, nor want it--now at least." '"How pitiless you are!" I exclaimed. '"Just as you were; so to part is best for us both. I once dreamt of being only too happy; I am sadly awake now." 'Our eyes met for the last time: the expression of hers was passionless and decided. I had nothing to hope from her; but I sighed deeply, with sorrow, pique, and even jealousy, as I watched her departing steps and saw the last flutter of her skirt between the stems of the silver birches, and then pulled slowly away from the trysting-place, never to seek it again! 'I can remember yet how the woods and lawns along the river's bank looked dreamily indistinct in the evening haze, as I pulled slowly and sadly homeward. 'Never since, till you spoke of her, have I heard aught of Annabelle Erroll, but I have since had reason to believe that she heard, in time, of my affair with Blanche Gordon.' So all this story of Leslie Fotheringhame's was the secret so skilfully concealed under the calm exterior of the beautiful blonde whom Cecil Falconer had met at Eaglescraig. CHAPTER XVII. HOPES AND FEARS. 'That was the way our affair of the heart came about, and was ended by my pride, vacillation, and suspicion,' said Fotheringhame; 'and now I have little doubt that she is quite aware that I--the Lancer lover--was her cousin, though I never told her so.' 'How odd of you to act so!' exclaimed Cecil. 'Odd--I was mad, I think!' 'From her manner and words, I thought that you and she possessed in common some mysterious antecedents.' 'An unpleasant way of putting it,' said Fotheringhame, with a shade of annoyance in his face; 'all that time was one of gloom to me. When I had to leave the Lancers I shall never forget the shock it gave me--though of course expected--to see the 'Army List' without my name in it; nor was I ever satisfied till I saw it there again, as a Cameronian. So you see, Falconer, that with all my general heedlessness of bearing, my life has not been without "its little romance, as most lives have, between the age of teetotum and tobacco," as George Eliot has it.' 'I may yet be the means of relighting this old flame again,' said Falconer; 'though it is said that there is nothing so difficult to revive as an old flirtation.' 'It was no flirtation----' 'Save in so far as you were concerned.'