By the peculiarity of our position kept much apart, or seldom finding opportunities, even in a house like Craigaderyn Court, for being alone, as it was perpetually thronged by visitors, we had to content ourselves with the joy of stolen glances that lit up the eye with an expression we alone could read, or that was understood by ourselves only; by tender touches of the hand that thrilled to the heart; and by inflections of the voice, which, do as we might, would at times become soft and tremulous. Our life was now full of petty stratagems and pretty lover-like enigmas, especially when in the presence of Lady Naseby; and now I also became afraid of Winifred Lloyd, who, unoccupied, so far as I could see, by any love-affair of her own, was almost certain, I thought, to see through mine. "There is no conquest without the affections," said Ninon de l'Enclos; "and what mole is so blind as a woman in love?" Yet Estelle was careful to a degree in her bearing, and never permitted her fondness of me to lull her into a sense of security from observation. I learned, however, from my ally Dora, that Lady Naseby was so provoked by what Estelle not inaptly termed our "late _fiasco_," that, save for the weight such a proceeding might have given it, they and the Viscount, too, would have quitted Craigaderyn Court, So they remained; but, thought I, what right had _he_ to be concerned in the matter? And unless I greatly erred, I felt certain that the Countess cared not how soon I received my marching orders for that fatal shore where so many of us were to leave our bones. Yet many a stolen kiss and snatched caress or pressure of the hand, many a whispered assurance of love, made Estelle and me supremely happy, while the few days that remained of my leave glided quickly--ah, too quickly!--past; and all desire for "glory" apart, I was not sorry when I saw that my fractured arm would prevent my being sent with the next draft, and cause my retention for a little time longer in England. "They who love must drink deeply of the cup of trembling," says some one; "for at times there will arise in their hearts a nameless terror, a sickening anxiety for the future, whose brightness all depends upon this one cherished treasure, which often proves a foreboding of some real anguish looming in the distant hours." As yet no forebodings came to mar my happiness; it was without alloy, save the prospect of a certain and, as we trusted to Providence, a temporary separation; yet it was well that I saw not the future, or what those distant hours had in store for me. "Estelle," said I, one day when a happy chance threw us together for a few minutes in an arbour of the garden, where we sometimes met at a certain hour, and separated after by different paths, like a pair of conspirators, "when shall a period be put to all this mystery--this painful, though joyous, false position in which we find ourselves?"