find him at confession! It would be so easy to
confess before him! He went along beside the house to the front, and
stopped beneath the open drawing-room window.

"Gertrude!" he cried softly, from his saddle.

Gertrude immediately appeared. "You, Richard!" she exclaimed.

Her voice was neither harsh nor sweet; but her words and her intonation
recalled vividly to Richard's mind the scene in the conservatory. He
fancied them keenly expressive of disappointment. He was invaded by a
mischievous conviction that she had been expecting Captain Severn, or
that at the least she had mistaken his voice for the Captain's. The
truth is that she had half fancied it might be,--Richard's call having
been little more than a loud whisper. The young man sat looking up at
her, silent.

"What do you want?" she asked. "Can I do anything for you?"

Richard was not destined to do his duty that evening. A certain
infinitesimal dryness of tone on Gertrude's part was the inevitable
result of her finding that that whispered summons came only from
Richard. She was preoccupied. Captain Severn had told her a fortnight
before, that, in case of news of a defeat, he should not await the
expiration of his leave of absence to return. Such news had now come,
and her inference was that her friend would immediately take his
departure. She could not but suppose that he would come and bid her
farewell, and what might not be the incidents, the results, of such a
visit? To tell the whole truth, it was under the pressure of these
reflections that, twenty minutes before, Gertrude had dismissed our two
gentlemen. That this long story should be told in the dozen words with
which she greeted Richard, will seem unnatural to the disinterested
reader. But in those words, poor Richard, with a lover's clairvoyance,
read it at a single glance. The same resentful impulse, the same
sickening of the heart, that he had felt in the conservatory, took
possession of him once more. To be witness of Severn's passion for
Gertrude,--that he could endure. To be witness of Gertrude's passion for
Severn,--against that obligation his reason rebelled.

"What is it you wish, Richard?" Gertrude repeated. "Have you forgotten
anything?"

"Nothing! nothing!" cried the young man. "It's no matter!"

He gave a great pull at his bridle, and almost brought his horse back on
his haunches, and then, wheeling him about on himself, he thrust in his
spurs and galloped out of the gate.

On th