me, make allowances for me, Lady Landale, I am quite
distracted!" There had returned a tinge of hope into his voice. "Where
is it?" he eagerly asked, seeking, as directed, for the pocket. "Ah!"
and mechanically repeating, "Forgive me!" he drew out the letter at
last and retreated, feverishly opening it under the light of the lamp.

Molly had turned round to watch. Up to this she had felt no regret for
his disillusion, only an irritable heat of temper that he should waste
so much love upon so poor an object. But now all her heart went to him
as she saw the sudden greyness that fell on his face from the reading
of the very first line; there was no indignation, no blood-stirring
emotion; it was as if a cold pall had fallen upon his generous spirit.
The very room looked darker when the fire within the brave soul was
thus all of a sudden extinguished.

He read on slowly, with a kind of dull obstinacy, and when he came to
the miserable end continued looking at the paper for the moment. Then
his hand fell; slowly the letter fluttered to the floor, and he let
his eyes rest unseeingly, wonderingly upon the messenger.

After a little while words broke from him, toneless, the mere echo of
dazed thoughts: "It is over, all over. She has lost her trust. She
does not love me any more."

He picked up the letter again, and sitting down placed it in front of
him on the table. "'Tis a cruel letter, madam, that you have brought
me," he said then, looking up at Molly with the most extraordinary
pain in his eyes. "A cruel letter! Yet I am the same man now that I
was this morning when she swore she would trust me to the end--and she
could not trust me a few hours longer! Why did you not speak? One word
from you as you stepped upon the ship would have saved my soul from
the guilt of these men's death!" Then with a sharper uplifting of his
voice, as a new aspect of his misfortune struck him: "And you--you,
too! What have I to do with you, Adrian's wife? He does not know?"

She did not reply, and he cried out, clapping his hands together:

"It only wanted this. My God, it is I--I, his friend, who owes him so
much, who am to cause him such fear, such misery! Do you know, madam,
that it is impossible that I should restore you to him for days yet.
And then when, and where, and how? God knows! Nothing must now come
between me and my trust. I have already dishonourably endangered it.
To attempt to return with you to-night, as perhaps you fancy I