"'Lingard,' 'Trevannion,'" murmured Captain Murray, as he ran his eye down the column of the morning paper specially devoted to so-called fashionable intelligence, "Lingard, Arthur Lingard; yes, I've met him; a very good fellow. And Trevannion; don't you know a Miss Trevannion, Bessie?" Mrs. Murray glanced up from her teacups. "What do you say, Walter? Trevannion; yes, I have met a girl of the name at my aunt's. A pretty girl, and I think I heard she was going to be married. Is that what you are talking about?" "No," her husband replied. "It's the other way--broken off, I wonder why." "What an old gossip you are," said Mrs. Murray. "No good reason at all, I daresay. People are so capricious now-a-days." "Still, they don't often announce a marriage till it's pretty certain to come off. This sort of thing," tapping the paper as he spoke, "isn't exactly pleasant." "Very much the reverse," agreed Mrs. Murray, and then they thought no more about it. "I wonder why," said a good many people that morning, when they caught sight of the announcement. For the two principals it concerned--Arthur Lingard, especially--had a large circle of friends and acquaintances, and their engagement had been the subject of much and hearty congratulation. It seemed so natural and fitting that these two should marry. Both young, amiable, good-looking, and sufficiently well off. Even the most cynical could discern no cloud in the bright sky of their future, no crook in the lot before them. And now-- No marvel that Captain Murray's soliloquy was repeated by many. But who would have guessed that in one heart it was ever ringing with maddening anguish? "I wonder why, oh, I wonder why he has done it. Oh, if he would but tell me, it could not surely seem quite so unendurable." And Daisy Trevannion pressed her aching head, and her poor swollen eyes on to her mother's loving bosom in a sort of wild despair. "Mamma, mamma," she cried, "help me. I cannot be angry with him. I wish I could. He was so gentle, so sweet--and he is so heartbroken, I can see by his letter. Oh, mamma, what can it be?" But to this, even the devoted mother, who would gladly have given her own life to save her child this misery, could find no answer. This was what had happened. They had been engaged about three months, the wedding day was approximately fixed, when one morning the blow fell. A letter to Daisy's father, enclosing one to herself--a letter which made Mr. Trevannion draw his brows together in instinctive indignation, and then as the first impulse cooled a little, caused him to turn to his daughter with a movement of irritation, underneath which, hope had, nevertheless, found time to reassert itself.