'This Falconer, used to laugh at the colonel's jokes and toady to his betters; but, by Jove, he won't have a chance of laughing at the colonel's jokes after this!' 'Silence, Hew,' said the general, grimly; 'but I am thinking more of the honour of the regiment than of him.' 'She will either marry me now quietly, or she will _not_,' thought Hew, triumphantly and pitilessly; 'if she does not, I suppose her tin will come to me anyhow, thanks to her father's will and this old fool, Sir Piers--shame to call the old fellow a fool, though, for being so deuced friendly to me!' he added mentally, with a hiccough. It has been said truly, that there are times, which come into the lives of some of us, in which the agonies of years are compressed into a few minutes--yea, it may be a second. And thus it was with Mary! Annabelle Erroll had her own cause for secret unhappiness--the strange episode of the closely-veiled woman in the vestibule--but at present all her sympathies were absorbed in the great catastrophe of the ball, and the unavailing sorrow of her friend Mary. CHAPTER VII. 'I HAVE COME FOR YOUR SWORD.' The mind of Cecil, next forenoon, when he partially awoke, and seemed to grope his way back to life and to the world, was a species of chaos. He was ill, sick, abed in the doctor's hands--too ill to think--too weak to rise. He found himself in his quarters in the castle, and the events of the past night confused themselves grotesquely and hideously with the prosaic features of the apartment in which he lay: the joy and rapture of his being with Mary, mingled with the remembered horror that seemed to envelop him, as darkness descended on his eyes and the ball-room whirled round him, and amid the circles of the dancers, the crash of the music and the murmur of many voices, he fell heavily on the floor, as all sense passed away, and he seemed to sink into a sea! When he did begin to come round and rouse himself, he was sensible of a hum of voices, and considerable odour of vinegar and of cigars, in his huge room--for a large one it was; and there were Acharn, Leslie Fotheringhame, and Dick Freeport and the doctor, refreshing themselves with brandy-and-water, talking about the ball and surmising about himself, sympathisingly, and in low tones. 'I cannot comprehend it,' he heard the doctor say; 'a curious case, and not like imbibing too much. He must have eaten or drunk something poisonous at the supper-table. There was no sudden transition from heat to cold--he had undergone no great fatigue or excessive weakness to cause such a fit as overtook him; but I have known strong and healthy persons, abounding in blood, seized with sudden faintings after violent exercise----' 'But, man alive, doctor, Falconer is one of the best round dancers in the regiment,' said Freeport. 'It must have been the closeness of the room,' said Acharn.