He seemed to be on the point of going, but to alter his mind, and he suddenly took my hand and pressed it hard. “Are you lonely, old fellow?” “Very, Duke--and I deserve to be.” “It’s for the best? You agree with me?” “Quite.” He looked sorrowfully in my face, wrung my hand a second time and walked off rapidly. It was the expression of his I ever after remembered with most pathetic heart-sickness and love. I never saw it in his eyes again--never again. I rose upon the Sunday morning restless still and unrefreshed. An undefinable feeling of ominous expectancy would not let me sit quiet or read or do anything but lend my mind to extravagant speculations and pace the room up and down in nervous irritability. At last, thoroughly tired out, I threw myself into an easy-chair and dozed off from sheer exhaustion. I could not have slept many minutes, when a clap in my ears awoke me. It might have been an explosive burst of thunder, so loudly it slammed upon my senses. Yet it was nothing more than the closing of the room door. Then I struggled to my feet, for Duke stood before me, and I saw that his face was white and menacing as death’s own. “Get up!” he cried, in a harsh, stern voice. “I want to ask you something.” I faced him and my heart seemed to suddenly swerve down with a sickly sensation. “What is it?” I muttered. “She’s gone--that’s all!” “Gone?” “She never met me this morning as she promised. I waited an hour--more. Then I grew frightened and went to her lodgings. She had left the evening before, saying she wasn’t coming back. A man came to fetch her and she went away with him. Do you understand?--with him!” “With whom?” I asked, in a confused, reeling manner; yet I knew. “I want you to tell me.” “How can I, Duke?” “I want you to say what you have done with your trust? There has been something going on of late--some secret kept from me. Where is that brother of yours?” “I know no more than you do.” “I shall find out before long. The cunning doesn’t exist that could keep him hidden from me if--if he is a party to this. Why are you silent? I can read it in your eyes. They have met, and it must have been through you.” “Before God, it wasn’t!” “Then they have!” He put his hand to his face and staggered as if he had been struck there. “Oh!” he gasped; “the horror of what I dreaded!” Then he came closer and snarled at me: “Here’s a friend, out of all the world! So patronizing to accept the poor little treasure of my life and soul, and so royal to roll it in the mud! Was this a put-up affair between you?” “You are hateful and unjust!” I cried, stung beyond endurance. “He forced himself upon us last Sunday. I was brutal, almost, in my efforts to get rid of him. But for some reason or other, Dolly--Miss Mellison--took his side. When I found so, I left them in a huff and repented almost immediately. But, though I sought far and near, I never came across them again till evening.” He listened with a black, gloomy impatience.