He dropped his eyes suddenly, and Gertrude turned away her face. A pause fell between them; then she said-- "Will it be long before news of any reliability can reach us?" "I cannot tell; it may be a matter of days, of weeks, or even months." "I fear it will be impossible to keep the rumour from my poor Lucy." "I am afraid so. I trust to you to save her from false hopes." "So I am to be Cassandra," thought Gertrude, a little wistfully. She was always having some hideous _role_ or other thrust upon her. Lord Watergate moved towards the door. A sudden revulsion of feeling came over her. "Perhaps," she said, "it is true." He caught her mood. "Perhaps it is." They stood smiling at one another like two children. Constance Devonshire coming upstairs a few minutes later found Gertrude standing alone in the middle of the room, a vague smile playing about her face. A suspicion that was not new gathered force in Conny's mind. Going up to her friend she said, with meaning-- "Gerty, what has Lord Watergate been saying to you?" "Conny, Conny, can you keep a secret?" And then Gertrude told her of the new hope, vague and sweet and perilous, which Lord Watergate had brought with him. "But it is true, Gerty; it really is," Conny said, while the tears poured down her cheeks; "I have always known that the other thing was not possible. Oh, Gerty, just to see him, just to know he is alive--will not that be enough to last one all the days of one's life?" But this mood of impersonal exaltation faded a little when Constance went back to Queen's Gate, where everything was in a state of readiness for the projected flitting. She lay awake sobbing with mingled feelings half through the night. "Even Gerty," she thought; "I am going to lose her too." For she remembered the smile in Gertrude's eyes that afternoon when she had found her standing alone after Lord Watergate's visit; a smile to which she chose to attach meanings which concerned the happiness of neither Frank nor Lucy. [Illustration: Decoration] [Illustration: Decoration] CHAPTER XXIII. A DISMISSAL. _O thou of little faith, what hast thou done?_ Lucy has always since maintained that the days which followed Lord Watergate's communication were the very worst that she ever went through. The fluctuations of hope and fear, the delays, the prolonged strain of uncertainty coming upon her afresh, after all that had already been endured, could be nothing less than torture even to a person of her well-balanced and well-regulated temperament. "To have to bear it all for the second time," thought poor Gertrude, whose efforts to spare her sister could not, in the nature of things, be very successful.