Well might he doubt if he were sleeping or waking--well might he ask if
he or they were mad.

And now, as, after a long, lingering look of affection upon the pale,
suffering face of Flora, he followed Henry from the room, his thoughts
were busy in fancying a thousand vague and wild imaginations with
respect to the communication which was promised to be made to him.

But, as Henry had truly said to him, not in the wildest freak of his
imagination could he conceive of any thing near the terrible strangeness
and horror of that which he had to tell him, and consequently he found
himself closeted with Henry in a small private room, removed from the
domestic part of the hall, to the full in as bewildered a state as he
had been from the first.

CHAPTER XI.

THE COMMUNICATIONS TO THE LOVER.--THE HEART'S DESPAIR.

[Illustration]

Consternation is sympathetic, and any one who had looked upon the
features of Charles Holland, now that he was seated with Henry
Bannerworth, in expectation of a communication which his fears told him
was to blast all his dearest and most fondly cherished hopes for ever,
would scarce have recognised in him the same young man who, one short
hour before, had knocked so loudly, and so full of joyful hope and
expectation, at the door of the hall.

But so it was. He knew Henry Bannerworth too well to suppose that any
unreal cause could blanch his cheek. He knew Flora too well to imagine
for one moment that caprice had dictated the, to him, fearful words of
dismissal she had uttered to him.

Happier would it at that time have been for Charles Holland had she
acted capriciously towards him, and convinced him that his true heart's
devotion had been cast at the feet of one unworthy of so really noble a
gift. Pride would then have enabled him, no doubt, successfully to
resist the blow. A feeling of honest and proper indignation at having
his feelings trifled with, would, no doubt, have sustained him, but,
alas! the case seemed widely different.

True, she implored him to think of her no more--no longer to cherish in
his breast the fond dream of affection which had been its guest so long;
but the manner in which she did so brought along with it an irresistible
conviction, that she was making a noble sacrifice of her own feelings
for him, from some cause which was involved in the profoundest mystery.

But now he was to hear all. Henry had promised to tell him, and as he
looked into his pale,