Lord Gordon speaks and receives his answer. Lady Vera is very sorry to pain him, but she has no heart to give. Captain Lockhart sees the shadow on the fair, English face of the young lord, and is secretly conscious of a savage satisfaction. She has refused him, too. She is too cold and proud to love any one, he tells himself. "Are you really going to-morrow, Lockhart?" Lord Gordon asks him in the drawing-room, that evening. "Yes, I am really going," he answers, and never dreams of the wild throb Lady Vera's heart gives beneath its silken bodice. "Why don't you ask me to go with you?" Lord Gordon continues, good-naturedly. "I have long contemplated a tour of the United States. I am _ennuyed_ to death. I should like a taste of a different life." "I shall be glad of your company, and you will be quite likely to have a taste of something different if you go with me," laughs Captain Lockhart. "Father writes me that my regiment may be ordered out on the plains to fight the Indians next month." "Ugh! those horrid savages!" the ladies cry, all but Lady Vera. She raises the black satin fan a little higher before her face, and leans back in her chair, indifferent, to all appearance, but, oh, with such a deadly pain tearing at her heart-strings. "To lose him like this," she moans to herself, "it is too dreadful. Oh, if I had even ten minutes alone with him, I would make him understand the truth. He should not leave me!" But Captain Lockhart, stealing a furtive glance at the beautiful face in its high-bred repose, tells himself sadly: "She is utterly indifferent to what fate I meet. Beautiful as she is, she must be utterly heartless." "Then if you like to have me I will be ready to go with you to-morrow, Lockhart," Lord Gordon announces, and gives Lady Vera one gloomy glance and heavy sigh. It is for her sake he is going. Since she is not for him he means to try and forget her. But Lady Vera, in the keen smart of her own pain is oblivious to his. She rises and slips through the low, French window out upon the balcony, and sits down in the darkness not heavier than her thoughts. Presently low voices float out to her from the curtained recesses of the window--Captain Lockhart's and Lord Gordon's. "Rather a sudden resolution, isn't it, this trip across the water?" in Lockhart's clear, full voice. "Well, yes," in Gordon's voice. "I'm running away from myself, you understand. I fancy we are sailing in the same boat, eh, old fellow?" "Yes," Captain Lockhart answers, quietly. "I thought so. Saw that you were hard hit. What are you going to do about it?" "Nothing," Captain Lockhart answers, with grim pleasantry. "I am a soldier. I look for wounds upon the field of battle." "Has she really a heart, do you think?" Lord Gordon pursues. "The fellows raved about her last season in London. She refused Greyhurst and a score of others as eligible. She must be very cold." "I fancy so," Captain Lockhart answers, dryly. "A beautiful iceberg."