But she answers, in a sad, shamed voice: "No, you need not congratulate me. I am not any happier than you are. He--he does not love me." "Does not love you? Then he must be a stock or a stone," De Vere says, indignantly. "He is neither," says Leonora, with the pretty pensive smile she has worn throughout their interview. "But let us speak no more of it. I should not have confessed to you only to show you how futile it would be for you to go on loving me. I thought it but justice to you. It may make it easier for you to forget me." "I shall never do that," he answers, with conviction. "You think so now, but time will console you," smiling. "I shall be gone out of your life forever in a few weeks." "Gone?" he echoes, blankly. "Yes; I am going away in three weeks' time. Aunt West goes with me to America." He starts. "Is it possible?" "Yes, we are going to seek a home in my own land. Bid me _bon voyage_, Lieutenant De Vere. You are the only friend I have made in England, that is, if I may call you my friend," wistfully. He gulps down a great sigh of disappointment, regret, and pain, and holds out his hand. "Yes, I am your friend, if I can not be your lover," he said, manfully. CHAPTER XXXVII. Something like a week later Lieutenant De Vere, strolling down a street in London, comes suddenly face to face with Clive, Lord Lancaster. "What! not gone home yet?" says the former, in surprise, and Lancaster flushes guiltily. "No; but when did you come to London?" he inquires. "Several days ago," De Vere replies, carelessly, and scanning his friend curiously. Lancaster does not bear the scrutiny well. He is wan and haggard looking. There is no color in his usually florid face, and his eyes are heavy and restless. "You have not finished your visit so soon, I trust," he observes, eying his friend in turn with a close scrutiny. De Vere has a worn air, too, as if dull and _ennuyé_. "Yes, I have finished my visit; I did not care to remain after my host took such a cavalier flight." "Ah, indeed!" sarcastically. "But I did not know that I was the object of your visit." "You were not, particularly; but I came away because I had no longer any excuse for staying." The tone was so peculiar that Lancaster looked at him more closely. He caught De Vere by the arm a little nervously. "De Vere, you don't mean to tell me that _she_ has refused you?" "_She_ is so indefinite. Whom do you mean?" airily. "I thought there was but one _she_ in the case. Miss West, of course." "Oh!" "Has she refused you, I say, De Vere?" imploringly. "Yes." "Really?" with something like incredulous joy in his voice, though he tries hard to keep it out of it. He has been so jealously sure all the while that Leonora would accept "the goods the gods provided," that he can scarcely take in the truth now. "Yes, Miss West has refused me, really. You seem glad of my ill-luck, Lancaster," in a tone of subdued bitterness. Lancaster is suddenly shocked at himself.