He too? Who then was _the_ lover--the other lover? Heron did not believe, and would not admit, that Blanchet was a genuine lover at all. The whole theory of Victor's duty to watch under Minola's windows was based on the assumption that Blanchet was no true lover, but a cunning hunter of fortune. Why then ask, was Mr. Sheppard too a lover? Heron did not at the moment stop to ask himself any such question, but after awhile the absurdity of his words occurred to him, and he was a little amused and a good deal ashamed of his odd and hasty way of putting the question. "Why shouldn't he be there as well as I?" he said. "Why should he be a lover any more than I?" Then he began to assure himself that the hated rival must have been there only by chance; and it is doubtful whether if he had thought much longer over the question he would not have ended by convincing himself that nothing but the merest chance had brought him, too, under Minola's window panes. It was, indeed, Minola's window under which he had been watching; and she too was watching, and never dreamed that he was so near. She looked from her window not long after he had gone, and saw the street all lonely, and felt lonely herself, and shuddered, thinking that life would ever be a dreary piece of work for her. It is a melancholy fact that all that time, and even long after she had gone in shuddering from the window, poor Sheppard was standing in a doorway at the opposite side of the street, and that she not only never saw him, but never thought of him. Her thoughts were of Victor Heron, and of her own folly and her own love--that love which seemed such folly, which was so hopeless, which she knew, or at least believed it was a sort of treason against friendship to indulge, although in absolute secret. In Uhland's pretty poem called "Departure" a youth is going on his wanderings, and his comrades escort him a little on his way, and as they go along they pass beneath the windows of a pretty girl. The lad looks up, and would fain if he might have a rose from her hand, and yet tells himself that he would not have it--for to what end to have the rose when she whom he loved cared nothing for him, and the rose would only wither with him, and to no purpose? When he has gone the girl strains her eyes after him in grief, and wonders what the world is to be to her now that he she loved is going far away, and never knew of her love. A few timely words might have spared all the heart-ache, no doubt; but it will be a very different world from that which we have known when all the words that might have been timely are spoken in time, or even when the feelings that might prompt the timely words have learned their own meaning at the right moment to give it breath. CHAPTER XVIII. "COUNSEL BETRAYED."