She left the room.  I turned away towards the window, where nothing faced me but the lonely autumn landscape—­I turned away to master myself, before I too left the room in my turn, and left it for ever.

A minute passed—­it could hardly have been more—­when I heard the door open again softly, and the rustling of a woman’s dress on the carpet moved towards me.  My heart beat violently as I turned round.  Miss Fairlie was approaching me from the farther end of the room.

She stopped and hesitated when our eyes met, and when she saw that we were alone.  Then, with that courage which women lose so often in the small emergency, and so seldom in the great, she came on nearer to me, strangely pale and strangely quiet, drawing one hand after her along the table by which she walked, and holding something at her side in the other, which was hidden by the folds of her dress.

“I only went into the drawing-room,” she said, “to look for this.  It may remind you of your visit here, and of the friends you leave behind you.  You told me I had improved very much when I did it, and I thought you might like——­”

She turned her head away, and offered me a little sketch, drawn throughout by her own pencil, of the summer-house in which we had first met.  The paper trembled in her hand as she held it out to me—­trembled in mine as I took it from her.

I was afraid to say what I felt—­I only answered, “It shall never leave me—­all my life long it shall be the treasure that I prize most.  I am very grateful for it—­very grateful to you, for not letting me go away without bidding you good-bye.”

“Oh!” she said innocently, “how could I let you go, after we have passed so many happy days together!”

“Those days may never return, Miss Fairlie—­my way of life and yours are very far apart.  But if a time should come, when the devotion of my whole heart and soul and strength will give you a moment’s happiness, or spare you a moment’s sorrow, will you try to remember the poor drawing-master who has taught you?  Miss Halcombe has promised to trust me—­will you promise too?”

The farewell sadness in the kind blue eyes shone dimly through her gathering tears.

“I promise it,” she said in broken tones.  “Oh, don’t look at me like that!  I promise it with all my heart.”

I ventured a little nearer to her, and held out my hand.

“You have many friends who love you, Miss Fairlie.  Your happy future is the dear object of many hopes.  May I say, at parting, that it is the dear object of my hopes too?”

The tears flowed fast down her cheeks.  She rested one trembling hand on the table to steady herself while she gave me the other.  I took it in mine—­I held it fast.  My head drooped over it, my tears fell on it, my lips pressed it—­not in love; oh, not in love, at that last moment, but in the agony and the self-abandonment of despair.