ad several
times.

"Anything more you would like to know?" asked Charles, inattentive and
impatient, mainly occupied in trying to hide the nameless exasperation
which invariably seized him when he looked at Dare, and to stifle the
contemptuous voice which always whispered as he did so, "And you have
given up Ruth to him--to _him_!"

"No, no, no!" said Dare, shaking his head gently, and regarding him the
while with infinite interest through his half-closed eyelids.

The dog-cart was coming round, and Charles hastily turned from him, and,
getting in, drove quickly away. Whatever Dare said or did seemed to set
his teeth on edge, and he lashed up the horse till he was out of sight
of the house.

Dare, with arms picturesquely folded, stood looking after him with mixed
feelings of emotion and admiration.

"One sees it well," he said to himself. "One sees now the reason of many
things. He kept silent at first, but he was too good, too noble. In the
night he considered; in the morning he told all. I wondered that he went
to Vandon; but he did it not for me. It was for her sake."

Dare's feelings were touched to the quick.

How beautiful! how pathetic was this _denouement_! His former admiration
for Charles was increased a thousand-fold. _He also loved!_ Ah! (Dare
felt he was becoming agitated.) How sublime, how touching was his
self-sacrifice in the cause of honor! He had been gradually working
himself up to the highest pitch of pleasurable excitement and emotion;
and now, seeing Ralph the prosaic approaching, he fled precipitately
into the house, caught up his hat and stick, hardly glancing at himself
in the hall-glass, and, entirely forgetting his promise to Charles to
remain at Atherstone till the latter returned from Vandon, followed the
impulse of the moment, and struck across the fields in the direction of
Slumberleigh.

Charles, meanwhile, drove on to Vandon. The stable clock, still
partially paralyzed from long disuse, was laboriously striking eleven as
he drew up before the door. His resounding peal at the bell startled the
household, and put the servants into a flutter of anxious expectation,
while the sound made some one else, breakfasting late in the
dining-room, pause with her cup midway to her lips and listen.

"There is a train which leaves Slumberleigh station for London a little
after twelve, is not there?" asked Charles, with great distinctness, of
the butler as he entered the hall. He had observed