'But mayn't I see you? Not to spake to you, Masther Richard. Only sometimes to see you, far off, maybe.' Poor Nan was crying all the time she spoke.--'Well, well, I'll go, I will, indeed, Masther Richard; only let me kiss your hand--an' oh! no, no, don't say good-bye, an' I'll go--I'm gone now, an' maybe--just maybe, you might some time chance to wish to see your poor, wild Nan again--only to see her, an' I'll be thinking o' that.' The old feeling--if anything so coarse deserved the name--was gone; but he pitied her with all his heart; and that heart, such as it was--though she did not know it--was bleeding for her. He saw her, poor creature, hurrying away in her light clothing, through the sharp, moonlight chill, which, even in the wrapping of his thick cloak, he felt keenly enough. She looked over her shoulder--then stopped; perhaps, poor thing, she thought he was relenting, and then she began to hurry back again. They cling so desperately to the last chance. But that, you know, would never do. Another pleading--another parting--So he turned sharply and strode into the thickets of the close brushwood, among which the white mists of night were hanging. He thought, as he stepped resolutely and quickly on, with a stern face, and heavy heart, that he heard a wild sobbing cry in the distance, and that was poor Nan's farewell. So Devereux glided on like a ghost, through the noiseless thicket, and scarcely knowing or caring where he went, emerged upon the broad open plateau, and skirting the Fifteen Acres, came, at last, to a halt upon the high ground overlooking the river--which ran, partly in long trains of silver sparkles, and partly in deep shadow beneath him. Here he stopped; and looked towards the village where he had passed many a pleasant hour--with a profound and remorseful foreboding that there were no more such pleasant hours for him; and his eye wandered among the scattered lights that still twinkled from the distant windows; and he fancied he knew, among them all, that which gleamed pale and dim through the distant elms--the star of his destiny; and he looked at it across the water--a greater gulf severed them--so near, and yet a star in distance--with a strange mixture of sadness and defiance, tenderness and fury. CHAPTER LXII. OF A SOLEMN RESOLUTION WHICH CAPTAIN DEVEREUX REGISTERED AMONG HIS HOUSEHOLD GODS, WITH A LIBATION. When Devereux entered his drawing-room, and lighted his candles, he was in a black and bitter mood. He stood at the window for a while, and drummed on the pane, looking in the direction of the barrack, where all the fun was going on, but thinking, in a chaotic way, of things very different, and all toned with that strange sense of self-reproach and foreboding which, of late, had grown habitual with him--and not without just cause.