I leant my head down upon my arm, without the heart to-night to go over the old ground. 'Well!' said my father at last, when the pipe was out and the fire had almost smouldered away. I shook my head. 'Cuthbert trusted me, and after all he may be living yet.' 'Not he.' He took his stick, and as he got up slowly from his arm-chair to go to bed, he added, 'You should think a bit of Hildred, too, Willie.' 'Of Hildred!' 'She gave Cuthbert up for dead long ago, and she sees you mostly every day.' With that he went upstairs, leaning on my shoulder, and would not say another word except 'Good night.' Good night! as if I could sleep with all this in my mind. Then Hildred knew now how I loved her, not as Cuthbert's brother, not as her old playfellow, but with a love as strong, as deep, longer far than his had been. And she? Until now, whenever I believed, as sometimes I did, that Cuthbert was dead, my only thought had been that at some time in the years to come, when we knew all for certain, I might comfort her--that she might get to care for me, not as she had cared for her first love, but gradually a little, because I loved her so much, and so that she might grow at last to be content. And now to be told, as my father had told me to-night, that I ought to think of Hildred's happiness. Was it possible that her happiness could depend the least on me? Could it be that her hope of seeing Cuthbert again was gone, and that her love had faded with her hope? She was so young--scarcely eighteen--when he left her. Her gentle nature was not made to stand alone. It might be that in its loneliness her heart had turned, without her knowing it, to the guardian who strove so hard to hide his love for her. The rain was still pattering against the window, and the wind blew in gusts through the ruins, but I took no heed of the storm. I was happy. I think that hour, sitting alone in the chimney-corner, while the last sparks were dying out of the peat fire, was the happiest of all my life. For I only thought of Hildred, of how perhaps some day she would come and turn all my life into brightness. I had never dreamed, since Cuthbert went away, that she could ever care for me, and now what a dream it was! I remember it because it never came to me again, because I woke suddenly and the dream was gone. I do not know where it took me, or how long it lasted, but in it Hildred was my own. We were together. Then suddenly it seemed as if Cuthbert stood before me, and I could not meet his eyes, full of a grave reproach as he looked from me to Hildred.