“Will you tell me that?” asked Rand.  “Will you tell me that, Jacqueline?”

“No!” cried Jacqueline; “I will tell you only the truth!  I love you—­love you.  Oh, my heart, my heart!” She turned from them both, sank down upon the summer-house step, and lay with her forehead on her arm.

There was a moment’s silence, then, “You see,” said Rand, not without gentleness, to the elder man.

Colonel Churchill leaned on his walking-stick, and his breath came heavily.  He wondered where Edward was—­Edward could always find words that would hurt.  At last, “We part, Mr. Rand,” he said, with dignity.  “In parting I have but to say that your conduct has been such as I might have expected, and that I conceive it to be my duty to protect my misguided niece from the consequences of her folly.  I warn you neither to write to her nor to attempt to see her.  If she writes to you otherwise than as I shall dictate; if she does not, when she has bethought herself, break with you once and forever,—­all’s over between us!  She is no niece of mine.  She is dead to me.  I’ll not speak to her, nor willingly look upon her face again.  I am a man of my word.  I have the honour, sir, to bid you a very good-day.”  He drew out and looked at his ponderous watch.  “I shall remain here with my niece for an hour.  Perhaps in that time she will awaken to her old truth, her old duty; and perhaps you will require no more in which to gather your papers and remove yourself from Fontenoy?”

“I shall not need the hour,” answered Rand.  “I will be gone presently.  God knows, sir, I had not thought to go this way.”  He turned from his host and bent for a moment over Jacqueline.  “Good-bye,” he said.  “Good-bye for a little while!  My heart is in your hands.  I trust you for constancy.  Good-bye—­good-bye!”

He was gone, moving rapidly toward the house.  Colonel Churchill drew a long sigh, wiped his face with his handkerchief, and looked miserably up to the green boughs where the mockingbird was singing.  He wished again for Edward, and he wished that Henry had not died.  He believed in Heaven, and he knew that Henry was there, but then the thought came into his mind that Henry was here, too, in the person of his child, prone on the summer-house steps.  Henry, also, had been a man of his word, had known his own mind, and exercised his will.  There, too, had been the veil of sweetness!  The Colonel sighed more heavily, wished again impatiently for Edward, then marched to the summer-house, and, sitting down, began to reason with Henry’s daughter.

Rand passed through the Fontenoy garden, in his heart a pain that was triumph, an exaltation that was pain.  Mounting the porch steps, he found himself in the presence of Major Edward playing Patience in the shade of the climbing rose.  The player started violently.  “I thought, sir,” he said, wheeling in his chair, “I thought you yet in the blue room!  How the deuce!—­I was on guard—­” the Major caught himself.  “I was waiting to renew our very interesting discussion.  Where have you been?”