At last there came a day which Cecil never forgot, from the emotions of mortification and humiliation it occasioned him, It was a Thursday--the usual 'march-out' day for the regiment. From his window he watched its departure, with bayonets fixed and colours flying, in heavy marching order, and in all the pride and bravery of the service, while he remained behind a prisoner, disgraced, deprived of his sword and sash, with a terrible ordeal before him, and too probably a doom--to him--worse than death! And he heard the drums grow fainter and fainter, till their last notes died away in the distance, and he heard only the beating of his heart, that followed them with painful yearning it had never known before. Anon, when the regiment returned, Freeport told him that when passing the house of Sir Piers Montgomerie, it had been halted in column, when the fine old soldier came out on the balcony and was received with a general salute, which he beheld with swelling heart and glistening eyes, and then he attempted to make a speech, but his voice failed him--yet he made a short one--so short as only to be equalled by that of the Duke of Wellington to the Household Brigade, when, after keeping silence for some time, he said, 'Guards! you know me, and I know you--stand at ease!' 'Was--was Miss Montgomerie on the balcony?' asked Cecil, after a pause. 'No; there was only old Mrs. Garth waving her handkerchief vigorously, and alternately mopping her eyes with it, poor old soul, as she thought, I have no doubt, of old John Garth of our Grenadiers. I thought it strange that the belle of our unlucky ball was not there.' But Mary had been watching the regiment, sorrowfully, from her own room, and missing an absent face sorely indeed. To her this was a time of great horror and dismay; each night that she laid her sweet face on the pillow, she thought: 'If I could only waken in the morning to find it all a dream--all a dream!' But alas! it was a dream from which there was no awakening. Blended with great pity and sorrow, she knew and felt now, in all its intensity, the love she had thought about, read about in romance, but never knew till she had met Cecil Falconer; the love, that is, whether found or not, ever a young girl's day-dream. To all, save Annabelle Erroll, she had to act the part of apparent unconsciousness of, or indifference to, all that was in progress. Abed, it seemed to her that she heard every hour struck by the adjacent clocks, and yet she must have slept a little, as the memory of more than one torturing or tantalising dream told her. People, however, do get through everything somehow.