"Forgive me, Lucy; this and all. Perhaps Colonel Cleeve would hardly grudge it to us when it is to be our last meeting on earth." "In the years to come," she sobbed, her face lying under his wet tears, "when we shall be an old man and woman, they may let us meet again. Oh, Karl, yes! and we can talk together of that best world, Heaven, where there will be no separation. We shall be drawing near its gates then, looking out for it." A slight tap at the door, and Miss Blake entered. She had come to summon Lucy. Seeing what she did see--the tears, the emotion, the intertwined hands, Miss Blake looked--looked very grim and stately. "Lucy, Colonel and Mrs. Cleeve have sent me to request you to go to them." "God bless you, Lucy," he whispered. "God bless you, my best and dearest. Good-bye, for ever." With what seemed a cool bow to Miss Blake and never a word, for in truth he was unequal to speaking it, Lieutenant Andinnian passed into the hall, caught up his hat and sword that he had left there, and let himself out, buckling on the latter. Lucy had her hands to her face, hiding it. Miss Blake waited. "My dear Lucy, what am I to say?" "Tell them that I wish to stay here alone for a few minutes. Tell them that Mr. Andinnian is gone." Miss Blake, her hard, thin lips compressed with the cruellest pain woman can ever feel, took her way back again. Only herself knew, or ever would know, what this dreadful blow was to her--the finding that she had been mistaken in Karl Andinnian's love. For anguish such as this women have lost life. One small drop, taking from the bitterness, there was--to know that he and his true love had bidden each other adieu for ever. "Perhaps--in a few weeks, or months to come--when he shall have recovered his folly--he and I may be friends again," she murmured. "Nay--who knows--may even become something warmer and dearer: his feeling for that child can only be a passing fancy. Something warmer and dearer," softly repeated Miss Blake, as she traversed the hall. "Lucy will come to you presently, Mrs. Cleeve. There's no hurry now: Mr. Andinnian is gone." "What is Lucy doing, Theresa?" "Sobbing silently, I think: she scarcely spoke to me. Fancy her being so foolish!" Mrs. Cleeve went at once to the library. She and her husband were as much alike as possible: mild, good, unemotional people who hated to inflict pain: with a great love for their daughter, and a very great sense of their own importance and position in the world, as regarded pride of birth. "Oh, Lucy dear, it was obliged to be. You are reasonable, and must know it was. But from my very heart I am sorry for you: and I shall always take blame to myself for not having been more cautious than to allow you to become intimate with Mr. Andinnian. It seems to me as though I had been living with a veil before my eyes." "It is over now: let it pass," was Lucy's faint answer.