Captain Shrapnell had written among his gossip some jocular tattle about Cleve's devotion to Miss Agnes Etherage, which had moved him oddly and uncomfortably; but the next letter disclosed the mystery of Cleve's clandestine visits to Malory, and turned his thoughts into a new channel. But here was all revived, and worse. Charity, watching with a woman's eyes, and her opportunities, had made to him a confidence about which there could be no mistake; and then Agnes was so changed--not a bit glad to see him! And did not she look pretty? Was there not a slight look of pride--a reserve--that was new--a little sadness--along with the heightened beauty of her face and figure? How on earth had he been so stupid as not to perceive how beautiful she was all this time? Cleve had more sense. By Jove! she was the prettiest girl in England, and that selfish fellow had laid himself out to make her fond of him, and, having succeeded, jilted her! And now she would not care for any one but him. There was a time, he thought, when he, Tom Sedley, might have made her like him. What a fool he was! And that was past--unimproved-- irrevocable--and now she never could. Girls may affect those second likings, he thought, but they never really care after the first. It is pride, or pique, or friendship, or convenience--anything but love. Love! And what had he to do with love? Who would marry him on four hundred a year, and no expectations? And now he was going to teaze himself because he had not stepped in before Cleve Verney and secured the affections of little Agnes. What a fool he was! What business had he dreaming such dreams? He had got on very well without falling in love with Agnes. Why should he begin now? If he found _that_ folly gaining upon him, he would leave Cardyllian without staying his accustomed week, and never return till the feeling had died as completely as last year's roses. Down the hill he marched in his new romance, as he had done more than a year ago, over the same ground, in his old one, when in the moonlight, on the shingle, he had met the same old lady of whom he was now in quest. The old trees of Malory rose up before him, dark and silent, higher and higher as he approached. It was a black night--no moon; even the stars obscured by black lines of cloud as he pushed open the gate, and entered the deeper darkness of the curving carriage-road that leads up through the trees. It was six o'clock now, and awfully dark. When he reached the open space before the hall-door, he looked up at the dim front of the house, but no light glimmered there. The deep-mouthed dog in the stable-yard was yelling his challenge, and he further startled the solitary woods by repeated double-knocks that boomed through the empty hall and chambers of the deserted house.