The bright ray had come and gone. It was but a memory now, and Alleyne uttered a sigh of relief, for he told himself that the past was dead, and he must divide it from his present existence by a broad, well-marked line. "Have you nothing to say, Moray?" whispered Lucy at last. "Do you not understand? Are you not going to make one more effort to make her change her purpose." "My dear Lucy!" he said tenderly. That was all, but he took her in his arms and kissed her, as if she were still the little child whom he used to pet and play with years before. As soon as he released her she stood looking at him with her brows knit for a few moments, and then said,-- "Moray, should you mind very much if I were to go?" "Go?" he said dreamily. "Go?" "Yes; to see Glynne married." She saw a twitching of the nerves of his face as he realised her meaning, and was regretting her question, when he said softly,-- "No, my dear, no. Go if you wish it. Yes, go." He turned from her and resumed his work, making figures rapidly on a sheet of paper before him, and as he evidently wished to be alone, she stole softly out of the room. Half-an-hour later Alleyne, who had left his work as soon as Lucy quitted him, and gone to a window which overlooked the road, saw his sister, very plainly dressed in white, go along the lane towards Brackley Church. He did not stir, but stood watching till the white dress disappeared among the tall columnar fir trees. Then came another figure going in the same direction, and in his moody, despairing state, Alleyne hardly noted for a few moments who it was, till the figure stopped short to turn and talk to a tall, gaunt-looking man, whom Alleyne recognised as Hayle, the man he had seen when Oldroyd was attending him, and it was the latter now speaking. After a few minutes conversation, Alleyne saw Hayle shake his head, and go in one direction, while Oldroyd went in the other, that taken by Lucy, toward the church. Then Alleyne turned from the window with a blank look of despair in his eyes, a strange vacant wildness of aspect in his drawn and haggard countenance. He walked to and fro. He threw himself into his great chair, but only to spring up again and pace the room with eager, hurried steps. He sank helplessly down upon his chair once more, and rested his throbbing brow upon his hands, his misery so acute that he felt that he was going mad; but as the time went on, a dull feeling of lethargy came over him, and he sat there crouched together till Mrs Alleyne came into the room and touched him with her cold, thin hand, when he started. "My boy!" she said tenderly, as she laid her hands upon his shoulders, "is it so hard to bear?" "Hard? Yes, cruelly hard," he said, with a sigh of misery. "And in turn we have to bear these agonies," she said softly. "I have known them, too, my boy, hours of despair when life all looked too black to be faced, and there seemed to be nothing to do but die."