Before this time, however, Clement Hazeldine had discovered that he, too, had lost his heart; but, as he told himself not once but a hundred times, he had found Hermia too late: she belonged to another; for that there was some sort of an understanding between her and Derison he felt nearly sure, although why there should be any secrecy about it he altogether failed to comprehend. As we have already seen, he was in the habit of going to John Brancker's house twice a week, ostensibly for the purpose of forming one in a musical quintets, but the magnet which really drew him there was something far different. Then, for two brief hours he could bask in Hermia's loveliness, he could gaze unrebuked into the depths of her violet eyes, and listen to the music of her voice, and steep his senses in the sweet fragrance of her presence. Frank, in whose ears the click of a billiard ball was far sweeter music than any discoursed by violin and piano, looked in occasionally on the musical evenings, when he played an indifferent second to Clem's first fiddle. He felt no jealousy at seeing the young Doctor so often at the Cottage; he was blessed with too good an opinion of himself to feel jealous of anyone. The limit of time would soon be reached to which he and Hermy had bound themselves by a conditional promise. He told himself that he still loved her as much as ever, and when the time should come for him to declare his intentions one way or the other, he felt nearly--but not quite--sure that he should say to Hermy: "I cannot live without you. Be my wife." Such was the state of affairs when the peaceful current of events was broken by the tragic death of Mr. Hazeldine and the subsequent arrest of John Brancker. Then followed a terribly anxious time for Miss Brancker and her niece, during which both Clement and Frank called often at Nairn Cottage. It is in such seasons of trial that a man's real qualities are most conspicuously made manifest. Clement's sympathy was so evidently genuine and heartfelt; wherever it was possible to ease their cares, or transfer any portion of their trouble, however small, from their shoulders to his own, it was done so quietly and unobtrusively, that they could not feel otherwise than touched by so much devotion to them and their interests. On the other hand, Frank's sympathy was so obviously forced and unreal; the whole state of affairs was so palpably distasteful to him, that even simple-hearted Miss Brancker began to suspect that perhaps she and her brother had been misreading the young man's character all along, and had been attributing to him qualities very different from any which he really possessed. But Frank was essentially a creature of the sunshine, a being to whom sickness and trouble and the thousand-and-one anxieties to which our poor humanity is liable, were utterly alien. When the skies began to lower and thunder filled the air, he was as much out of his element as a butterfly on a rainy day.