also won no response. And then came an
explanation. She had been in London, but kept him ignorant of the
fact for sufficient reasons. She had neither thought of him nor
wanted him, for her life was full of another.

On a day in late March, Brendon received a little, triangular-shaped
box through the post from abroad, and opening it, stared at a wedge
of wedding cake. With the gift came a line--one only: "Kind and
grateful remembrances from Giuseppe and Jenny Doria."

She sent no direction that might enable him to acknowledge her gift;
but there was a postal stamp upon the covering and Brendon noted
that the box came from Italy--from Ventimiglia, a town which Doria
once mentioned in connection with the ruined castle and vanished
splendours of his race.

And yet, despite this sudden, though not surprising, event, there
persisted with Mark a conviction that this did not mean the end.
Time was to bring him into close companionship with Jenny again: he
knew it for an integral factor of the future; but the persistence of
this impression could not serve to lighten his melancholy before an
accomplished fact. That he might live to be of infinite service to
Jenny a subconscious assurance convinced him; but he must say
good-bye to love forever. Henceforth hope was dead and when duty
called he knew not what form his duty might assume. Through a
sleepless night he retraced every moment of his intercourse with
Doria's wife and much tormented himself.

But other recollections awakened by this survey gave him pause and
pointed to mysteries as yet unguessed. For was it possible that this
tender-natured woman, who had mourned her husband so bitterly but
nine months before, could now enter with such light-hearted joy into
union with another man? Was it reasonable to see Jenny Pendean, as
he remembered her in the agony of her bereavement, already the happy
and contented bride of one a stranger to her until so recently?

It was indeed possible, because it had happened; but reasons for so
untimely an event existed. They might, if understood, absolve the
widow for an apparent levity not consonant with her true and
steadfast self. It cast him down, almost as much as his own vanished
dream and everlasting loss, that hard-hearted love could work such a
miracle and banish the wedded past of this woman's life so
completely in favour of a doubtful future with a foreign spouse.

There were things hidden, and he felt a great desire to penetrat