Eliot waited almost an hour in the drawing-room for madame to return, and Mrs. Van Zandt grew angry and impatient at the detention of her guest by that Little Nobody. Eliot made all the excuses he could. They were talking about the flowers; Mme. Leonie loved them so dearly, etc. At last he went in search of the two. Madame was just emerging from the conservatory with a smile of triumph on her handsome face. As he would have passed her, she detained him with a hand laid heavily on his arm. "Do not go to her yet. She desired me to keep you away from her a little while until she can collect her thoughts and decide whether it is best to share her terrible secret with you or not." "But surely she needs me now," he said, quailing at the words. "Her terrible secret!" "She prefers to be alone, she said," madame returned, so positively that he decided, against his sense of duty, to humor Una's whim. He guessed it was not a pleasant revelation madame had made among the warm, sweet odors of the dim conservatory. The actress returned to the drawing-room, made her adieus, and departed. Then the rest of the party broke up, and the family retired to their several apartments. Eliot went to the conservatory for Una. "I can not leave her alone any longer in her trouble, poor child!" he thought, with a heart full of tenderness. To his surprise, the flowery retreat was quite deserted. "She has stepped out unperceived in the confusion of the leave-takings, and gone to her room," he decided, and a yearning impulse led him to seek her there. He knocked at first softly on the door, and receiving no reply, entered quietly, feeling that she needed him in the distress she was enduring over madame's revelation. But the room, like the conservatory, was deserted. Over the dressing-table the gas was burning brightly. Eliot's eyes quickly detected an envelope lying just beneath the light that bore in large characters his own name. CHAPTER XXXIX. He stood staring with frightened eyes at the white envelope, with its large black letters formed in Una's crude handwriting, dreading to touch it, for a swift instinct told him the truth. She had left him, he felt quite sure--left him almost in the very hour when the discovery of their mutual love for each other had paved the way to their wedded happiness. Mme. Lorraine, like the serpent crawling into Eden, had brought woe and pain where love and joy had reigned. All this flashed over him instinctively as he took the letter in his hand and tore it open, devouring in fierce haste the brief, sad note Una had written such a little while ago that the ink was scarcely dry upon the page.