"Whom did you say?" cried Hypatia, almost with a shriek. "Not Roland Massinger? Oh, don't say he is dead!" "He is not dead, my dear," said Mrs. Summers, "only missing. That means, I suppose, that he has not rejoined his regiment. There is nothing so very alarming about that." "Not alarming--not alarming!" answered Hypatia, in low anguished tones. "Do you know what it means? It may be worse than dead--far worse. He may be in the hands of the enemy--given over to torture. Who can tell? And it is I who am to blame for his presence in this country, for his taking part in this dreadful war. His blood is upon my head, wretched girl that I am!" "My dear Hypatia," said Mrs. Summers, gently taking her hand, "why rush to such extreme conclusions? In the first place, the poor fellow is not known to be dead, or even a prisoner. In the next, you cannot be held responsible for the rash resolve of a man whom you felt you could not marry. It is most unfortunate, I grant you, but surely you are not to be held accountable." "No, no! it was all my doing. My heedlessness and vanity must have encouraged him, or he would never have thought of me in that way. Then a foolish ambition stifled any natural liking. I _did_ like and respect him far more than any other man I had ever met. And now, this is the end of it! He is dead, and I am the unhappy cause. I shall never recover it." Words were of no avail. In vain Cyril Summers and his wife tried to moderate her passionate remorse. She could see nothing but the darkest fate and endless sorrow before her. She had destroyed his happiness, his career, and now his life had been sacrificed to her insane desire to travel out of the sphere which Providence had assigned to her. Comparatively soothed by Mr. Summers' promise to send a trusty messenger to procure reliable information as to his disappearance and probable fate, she at length consented to retire with her friend and comforter. To retire, but not to rest. If she slept, troubled visions of pale corpses and blood-stained victims mingled with her dreams, and the dawn had appeared before the slumbers which soothe alike the young and old, the innocent and the guilty, brought transient rest and peace to her troubled spirit.