“That is cruel to those who love her,” pleaded Alick, his eyes filling with tears.

“If cruel it is necessary,” said Mr. Dundas.

“But she must need friends about her now more than she ever did,” urged Alick.  “Tell me at least where to find her, that I may do what I can to console her.”

Mr. Dundas shook his head.  “No,” he said sternly, “She is dead to me, and shall be dead to my friends.  She is blotted out from my love, and I will blot her out from my memory; and no one’s persuasions can bring back what is effaced.  Now, my dear boy, let us understand one another.  I have surprised your secret:  you love my daughter, and had she been worthy of you I would have given her to you more willingly than to any one I know.  But she herself has fixed the gulf between us, which I will not pass nor help any one else to pass.  Learn to look on her as dead, for she is dead to me, to you, to the world.”

“Never to me,” cried Alick.  “While she lives she must be always to me what she has been from the first day I saw her.  Whatever she has done, I shall always love her as much as I do now.”

“You are faithful,” replied Sebastian, “but trust me, boy, no woman that ever lived was worth so much fidelity.  I will protect you against your own wish, and be your friend in spite of yourself.  You shall not know where she is, and you shall not throw yourself away on her.  As she has elected to be effaced, she shall be effaced—­blotted out for ever.”

“Then I will consecrate my life to finding her,” cried Alick warmly.

Mr. Dundas shrugged his shoulders.  “Who can persuade a willful man against his folly?” he said coldly.  “You are following a marsh-light, my boy, and if you do find it you will only be landed in a bog.”

“If I find her I shall have found my reward,” Alick answered with boyish fervor.  “It will be happiness enough for me if I can bring back one smile to her face or lighten one hour of its sorrow.”

“Let well alone,” said Mr. Dundas; but Alick answered, “Not till it is well; and God will help me.”

Whereupon the interview ended, and Alick left the house, feeling something as one of the knights of old might have felt when he had vowed himself to the quest of the Holy Grail.

When Mr. Dundas came home, naturally the families called, as in duty bound and by inclination led.  Excitement concerning Ford House was at its height, for there were two things to keep it alive—­the one to see how the bride and bridegroom looked, the other to try and pick up something definite about Leam.  And among the rest came Mr. Gryce, with his floating white locks falling about his bland cherubic face, his mild blue eyes with their trick of turning red on small provocation, and his lisping manner of speech, ingenuous, interrogatory, and knowing nothing when interrogated in his turn—­somehow gleaning full ears wherever he passed, and dropping not even a solitary stalk of straw in return.  He expressed his sorrow that he had not seen lately his young friend, Miss Dundas.