"The tall young lady in brown, who seemed to notice you wanted help;" he remembered those words of Miss Merriman. Good Heavens! it must have been she; it must have been her little hand that guided him so gently; oh, his miserable blindness. Of course she had seen this Percy Trafford, and he had told her all about the guest they expected, and she had come to the station just to see him once again. But he would not speak of this to Fern; his darling's secret should be kept by him; he would hide these sweet proofs of her love and devotion in his own breast. Fern wondered why the miserable, harassed look left his face. He looked quite young--a different man--as he bade her good-bye; his shoulders were no longer stooping, his head was erect. "Good-bye, Miss Trafford," he said. "I shall come and see you and your mother again before I leave. I shall go back to Sandycliffe next week, and set my house in order, and talk to my sister. I do not doubt for a moment that she will offer to accompany me. I shall not come back until I bring Crystal with me." And Fern quite believed him. There were restless sleepers that night in Belgrave House. Raby was revolving his plans and wondering what Margaret would say; and on the other side of the wall Erle tossed, wakeful and wretched, knowing that his fate was sealed, and that Evelyn Selby and not Fern Trafford was to be his future wife. And now, as he lay in the darkness, he told himself that in spite of her goodness and beauty he could never love her as he loved Fern. He knew it at the moment he asked her to marry him, and when she put her hand in his and told him frankly that he had long won her heart. "You are too much a gentleman to treat a woman badly," Mr. Huntingdon had said to him, well knowing the softness and generosity of Erle's nature; and yet, was he not treating Fern badly? He had thought over it all until his head was dizzy; but his conscience had told him that his sin against Fern had been light in comparison with that against Evelyn. What were those few evenings in Beulah Place compared to the hours he had passed in Evelyn's society? He had been in Lady Maltravers's train for months; he had suffered her to treat him as a son of the house. He had ridden with Evelyn in the Row; she had been his favorite partner in the ball-room. When they had gone to the opera Erle had been their escort. It was perfectly true, as Mr. Huntingdon said, that she had a right to expect an offer from him; their names had long been coupled together, and Erle's weakness and love of pretty faces had drawn the net round him. And there were other considerations that had moved him--his dread of poverty; the luxurious habits that had become a second nature; and above all, reluctance to disappoint the old man who, in his own way, had been good to him. Erle knew that in spite of his hardness and severity, his uncle clung to him as the Benjamin of his old age.