"I wondered," she said, below her breath, "if you would care to come--I have been watching you since we entered--just after the rising of the curtain, my lord." Those past moments, wasted on Statira's noisy charms while she gazed at him, were too utterly dead, too smitten into extinction by her voice and her look to be even regretted. "Do not think," he answered, "that I left this to chance, madam. I should have come to Bristol." She moved half round so that she could see his face. They were both in shadow, only the yellow light from without touched his white silk cuff, and his hand resting on the back of the empty chair before him. "I received your letter, my lord," she said. "Forgive me if I could not answer it." "You understood?" asked Rose Lyndwood intently; "by what I said and what you have heard since, you understand?" Her delicate and spiritual face quivered with a smile. "Oh, yes," she replied. The folds of the grey silk wrap touched her chin, and the pale auburn curls loosely gathered on her proud head fell apart softly on her low brow. Looking at her my lord changed in voice, in mien, in expression, and a part of him that no other had ever seen was hers to gaze on. "If my lady and your brother wished it," she added, "there was no other thing to do, and I would have desired you to act as you did, my lord." "As I knew," he answered; "but I am selfish enough to wish you, madam, to know what it costs me"--he caught his breath and bent towards her--"no, not that, I wish to tell you----" Miss Boyle interrupted him. "Shall we not, for our own sakes, remember Miss Hilton? What you have not dared to say to me before you cannot say now," her tone sank to an exquisite tenderness; "this is farewell." "And because it is farewell," said my lord in a tone low but swelling, "I must be bold enough to say some things to you--to tell you this at least, that you have given me the sweetest pain--that I would sooner have died on my own sword than do what I have to do." "But that way is for boors," she flashed response; "gentlemen must live. Perhaps I also see no great joy ahead"--her eyes were like live gold in her shadowed face; "it has all been a pitiful matter, and I am sorry for Miss Hilton, but as for us--we may find some greatness in our way of meeting the future." Her breath came hastily, and she lifted her fine fingers to her throat and loosened the grey wrap. "What do you think I can do?" asked my lord, something wildly; he straightened himself and half withdrew into the shadow of the box. She heard the rattle of his sword, the shiver of his silks, and saw that he pressed his clenched hand to his brow. "Where am I to find my consolation?" "Oh, sir!" cried Miss Boyle. "What can I say, or how judge for you? My philosophy is a woman's, and suited to a woman's needs." Rose Lyndwood stared at her across the dusty shadows, and all that was noble in him lay bare in his gaze.