“I confess,” said the parson, with a melancholy shake of the head, “that it is precisely this second meeting which reawakened all my doubts. You know I had never been disposed to consider Colonel Harcourt seriously in the matter, deeming it so much more probable that Ellinor should have been attracted by the younger gentleman. And I had most earnestly trusted that, the latter being (or I am no judge of character) an honest-hearted youth, affairs were by no means past remedy.” “You are right,” answered David, “Mr. Herrick is an honourable man. I saw him the day before his meeting with Harcourt. What passed between us is sacred to both. Suffice it: I am satisfied.” The parson sighed and again shook his head. “Satisfied!” he echoed. “Would I could feel satisfied about the welfare of that poor child; nay, about any one detail of the whole incredible business! At first I could have sworn.... You see, since her flight all my theories are upset. There is only one thing clear, and that is the emptiness of our lives without her!” Thereupon the younger man’s passion burst forth. He struck the saddle bow with his clenched hand: “In Heaven’s name, spare me any more of this! My God, man, do you not think I feel it at least as much as you? If she had grown into your heart, how had it been with mine?” “Forgive me,” interposed the other in alarm at his companion’s vehemence. (Was this the old brain-sick David back again, was the old story of Bindon House to begin once more?) “Forgive me,” he repeated. “I had no idea....” “No idea!” The rider looked down upon his companion with a bitter smile. “And did I not hear you boast, but a moment ago, that you could read the human countenance? No idea that I loved Ellinor! Why, man, have I not loved her since the first instant these eyes beheld her, ah, me, nearly a year ago! with the lamplight shining on her golden head! And her blue eyes—her blue eyes!” With the inexplicable shyness of the man for his fellow-human, the parson almost recoiled from the vision of passion unexpectedly laid bare before him. But like those mountain-chasms filled with mist to the wayfarer’s eye, save when a rare and sudden gust of wind allows their depth to be fathomed for a moment, the deeps of Sir David’s heart were swiftly veiled again. He resumed the thread of his thought, in a composed manner, though somewhat dreamily, as if speaking to himself rather than to a listener: “I came down that first night from my tower, I remember, eyes and mind dazed by the glory of that new star which I was so inordinately elated at having been the first to see, and I thought,” with a little laugh at once tender and exceedingly melancholy, “that another miracle—I was in the mood for miracles—had been wrought for me, and that the star in the firmament had taken living shape on earth!”