“How is it, Maria, my love, that we have seen nothing of your father, lately?  I have never known him, since we have been in this part of the country, to be so long absent from us at one time.”

“Nay, dear mamma,” returned the pained girl, the tears starting to her eyes, in spite of her efforts to restrain them, “I do not exactly know what can detain him.  Perhaps he is not at the farm,” and here her tears forced their way—­“you know, dearest mamma, that he is very fond of long hunting excursions.”

“Yes, but, my child, why do you weep?  Surely there is nothing in that to produce such emotion.  He will soon be back again.”

“Oh! yes, I hope so.  Forgive me, my dear mamma, but I have a very bad head-ache, and never felt more nervous than I do this evening.  Perhaps it is the effect of my ride in the heat of the sun.  Shall we go on.  It is nearly sunset, and I dread your being exposed to the night-air.”

“Oh! it is so delicious,” softly returned the invalid; “I feel as if I had not lived for the last twelve months, until now.  Only a little while longer, shall I not, Mr. Ronayne?  Perhaps I may never have an opportunity of ascending to this summer-house again.”

During this short conversation, trifling in itself, but conveying, under the circumstances, so much subject for deep and painful reflections, the young officer had evinced much restlessness of manner, yet without interposing any other remark than to join Miss Heywood’s entreaties that her mother would suffer herself to be conducted home, before the dew should begin to fall.  In order, moreover, as much as possible to leave them uninterrupted in the indulgence of their feelings, he had from the first risen, and stood with his back to them, within the entrance of the summer house, and was now, with a view to drown their conversation to his own ear, whistling to Loup Garou, sitting on his haunches outside the garden-gate, looking fixedly at him.

Touched by the account he had received of the fidelity of the dog, he, had, with the consent of Sergeant Nixon, who was glad to secure for his favorite so kind a protector, become possessed of him from the moment of his return home; and time, which had in some degree blunted the sorrow of the animal for the loss of one master, rendered equally keen his instinct of attachment for the other.  Within the month he had been his, every care had been taken by Ronayne himself, as well as by his servant, to wean the mourner from the grave of Le Noir, on which, for the first few days, he had lain, absorbed in grief—­refusing all food, until, yielding at length to the voice of kindness, his memory of the past seemed to have faded wholly away.