"I am very sorry I have caused you pain, Captain Lockhart, but I shall never marry." He rises and looks down at her with his handsome face grown strangely pale and grave, his blue eyes dim and heavy. "So be it, Lady Vera," he answers, folding his arms across his broad breast. "You know what is best for you, but, ah, lovely one, if you could know how sweet were the hopes you have slain this hour you could not choose but weep over my saddened life." She put up her white hand imploringly. "Forbear, Captain Lockhart. You cannot guess what pangs are aching in my breast or you would spare me your reproaches. Be pitiful and leave me." "Not here," he says, looking up and down the flowery lane. "Let me take you back to the house, Lady Vera. We cannot trust these autumnal skies. It may rain at any moment." "As you will," she answers, wearily, and rising, retraces her steps by his side. But this time they speak no word to each other and the fair young countess flies up to her room, and flings herself down on her couch to weep such tears as have never rained from those lovely eyes before, for a great happiness and a great sorrow have come into her life, as it were, together. "For I love him," she moans to herself. "I love him, but as Heaven sees me, I did not know it. It all came to me like a flash when he was telling me how he loved me. Oh, God, what happiness is possible to me, and yet beyond my reach." She lies still weeping bitterly, and recalling in all its bitterness that midnight marriage by the side of her dying mother. "Oh! what a blind mistake it was," she weeps. "But for Leslie Noble I might marry the man I love. I might go back to America with him. I might tell him the story of my oath of vengeance, and he would help me to find my enemy and punish her for her sin." The day drags wearily. In the afternoon Vera goes down to the library in search of something to read. Gliding softly in she finds it tenanted by Captain Lockhart, who is busy over a fresh batch of papers from the United States. He glances up as she is about withdrawing, and springs to his feet with courteous grace. "Pray do not let me frighten you, Lady Vera. I will take my budget of papers, and be off," he exclaims. "No, I do not wish to disturb you," she answers. "I am in search of something to read myself." "Pray take your choice from among my papers," he replies, gravely, but kindly, and half-listlessly Lady Vera turns them over and selects one at random. Captain Lockhart places a chair for her and returns to his reading, thinking that the best way to place her at her ease. His heart yearns over the beautiful, pale, suffering face, but he does not dream of her sorrow, and he has no right to comfort her, so he turns his glance away, and, looking round again a little later, sees that Countess Vera has quietly swooned away in her chair, and that the American newspaper has slipped from her lap to the floor.