"My poor, innocent, tender-hearted darling! will she be sorry when she reads it?" thought Mr. Lansdell, as he addressed his letter. "Will this parting be a new grief to her, a shadowy romantic sorrow, like her regret for drowned Shelley, or fever-stricken Byron? My darling, my darling! if fate had sent me here a twelvemonth earlier, you and I might have been standing side by side in the moonlight, talking of the happy future before us. Only a year! and there were so many accidents that might have caused my return. Only one year! and in that little space I lost my one grand chance of happiness." Mr. Lansdell had done his duty. He had given Charles Raymond a promise which he meant to keep; and having done so, he gave his thoughts and fancies a license which he had never allowed them before. He no longer struggled to retain the attitude from which he had hitherto endeavoured to regard Mrs. Gilbert. He no longer considered it his duty to think of her as a pretty, grown-up child, whose childish follies amused him for the moment. No; he was going away now, and had no longer need to set any restraint upon his thoughts. He was going away, and was free to acknowledge to himself that this love which had grown up so suddenly in his breast was the one grand passion of his life, and, under different circumstances, might have been his happiness and redemption. CHAPTER XX. "OCEANS SHOULD DIVIDE US." Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert went to church arm-in-arm as usual on the morning after the picnic; but Sigismund stayed at home to sketch the rough outline of that feudal romance which he had planned among the ruins of Waverly. The day was very fine,--a real summer day, with a blazing sun and a cloudless blue sky. The sunshine seemed like a good omen, Mrs. Gilbert thought, as she dressed herself in the white muslin robe that she was to wear at Mordred. An omen of what? She did not ask herself that question; but she was pleased to think that the heavens should smile upon her visit to Mordred. She was thinking of the dinner at the Priory while she sat by her husband's side in church, looking demurely down at the Prayer-book in her lap. It was a common thing for her now to be thinking of _him_ when she ought to have been attending to the sermon. To-day she did not even try to listen to the rector's discourse. She was fancying herself in the dusky drawing-room at Mordred, after dinner, hearing _him_ talk. She saw his face turned towards her in the twilight--the pale dark face--the dreamy, uncertain eyes. When the congregation rose suddenly, at the end of the sermon, she sat bewildered for a moment, like a creature awakened from a dream; and when the people knelt, and became absorbed in silent meditation on the injunctions of their pastor, Mrs. Gilbert remained so long in a devotional attitude, that her husband was fain to arouse her by a gentle tap upon the shoulder. She had been thinking of _him_ even on her knees. She could