“I understand that Mr. Carlyon is in London upon a visit, and that the Misses La Sarthe have gone to the sea—­” and then, as his eyes touched her with their pitiful questioning surprise, she blurted out the truth.

“Miss Halcyone La Sarthe was fetched away on last Thursday by her stepmother—­I did not hear the name—­and no one knows where she has gone.  La Sarthe Chase is shut up.”

John Derringham closed his eyes—­his powers of reasoning were not strong enough yet to grasp the actual meaning of this—­it seemed to him as though Halcyone were dead, taken away from him by some fate and that all things were at an end.

Arabella grew very frightened.

“Mr. Carlyon telegraphs from London every day,” she ventured to announce.

But this appeared to bring no comfort, and the nurse returning, signed to her to leave the room, for John Derringham lay still as one dead.

And, when Arabella arrived at her own sanctum, she burst into tears.  What a fool she had been to tell him that, she felt.

All these days, Halcyone passed in a repressed agony in spite of her prayers and unshaken beliefs.  She knew it was her winter time and she must bear it until the spring should come, though it was none the less hard to support.  But she got through the hours with perfect surface calm—­and her stepsisters thought her stupid and dull, while Mrs. Anderton decided there was something unnatural about a girl who took not the slightest interest in shopping, and was perfectly indifferent about all the attractive garments which were put upon her back.  She always expressed her thanks so gently, and was ever sweet and willing to be of use, but the look of pain remained deep in those star-like, mysterious eyes, and caused sensations of discomfort to grow in Mrs. Anderton’s kindly breast.

Cheiron’s laconic messages were delivered to Halcyone every day by Demetrius.

John Derringham was no worse.

He was having every care.

Sir Benjamin Grant had gone down again.

His ankle was satisfactorily set.

But never a word that he had asked for her, and yet she read in the morning papers each day, as well as knew from her Professor’s information, that her lover was going on splendidly, and would soon be embarked upon a convalescence.  The paper appeared to regard the accident as safely over, and the patient as returning to health.

For Mrs. Cricklander, well-skilled in the manipulating of reporters in her own country, knew exactly what impression she wished to give to the press.  And she had no intention of the idea getting abroad that her injured visitor was in a very exhausted condition, because there were those she knew who would suggest that she had bagged him while he was at her mercy—­when, later on, they heard the news of her engagement, which she felt was each day growing more certain of becoming a fact.  And in Halcyone’s brave heart not a doubt ever entered—­she waited and believed and endured, in silent pain.