His first impulse was to rush from his covert, fasten upon him, and strangle him; but the physical proportions of Hal were such as to compel him to reflect, in spite of his intense vindictiveness, upon the prospect of success in such a step. To be himself overpowered and fail, would be destruction to his hopes; and he paused to rack his brain for the best course for him to adopt. But Harry Vivian was light of heart and of step, too, and he was abreast of Mires, and had disappeared in the recesses of the wood before the latter had decided upon what step he should take. Nothing was left for him but to retrace his steps, with the endeavour of meeting Lester Vane as he returned from his sport. He threw his gun over his shoulder and moved away with a shadow of gloom settled upon his features. “Fool,” he muttered, “not to have thought of my gun. A stiff charge in both barrels would have more than sufficed to have dealt him his fate, and who would have suspected me?” He cast his eyes rapidly in the direction Hal had taken, but no sign of him was visible, not even his receding footstep could be heard in the solemn stillness. He failed to meet Lester Vane in the wood, and when they encountered at dinner he saw that the latter treated him coldly, and with suspicious distrust. As usual, old Wilton engaged him in conversation, leaving Lester the opportunity of paying undivided attention to Flora. With glaring eyes he watched every movement of both. He perceived that his rival was actuated by no common motive to gain the favourable opinion of Flora, and he observed that she seemed abstracted and inattentive, though her cheek was blooming like a rose, and her eye shining like a star. But for the circumstance he had witnessed that morning, he would have believed that the low, earnest words, and the deep fervent gaze of Lester Vane had occasioned her heightened colour and the brilliancy of her eye; now he was convinced that her secret interview with young Vivian was the cause, and he cursed him bitterly in his heart. Flora, pleading a headache, retired early, and Colonel Mires, feeling that conversation after she had gone would be insupportable, alleged fatigue as an excuse to seek his room, leaving Lester Vane and old Wilton alone. The Colonel was too excited to remain in his room, and he walked upon the terrace, gazing up at the lighted windows of the sleeping apartments, imagining that in which Flora would repose, and groaning in spirit, as he thought that he would not be the chosen object of her thoughts and prayers ere she sank into the fairy land of dreams. Once or twice he fancied that a shadow flitted past him, although at some little distance, and suddenly remembering the incident in Regent’s Park, it occurred to him that the same watcher at Flora’s window there might be here upon the same errand.