certainly not playing. Miss Crawcour's back
was to the light, but a glance showed me beyond
a shadow of doubt that she had been crying—
was crying, even, when I entered the room.

What was I to do? Fortescue was my
friend. The room was public to everybody in
the castle. If I retired, it would be a marked
act, showing that I felt I had interrupted some
scene which did not require witnesses.

"Are you having a game, or only practising?"
I said to Fortescue, merely to break the awkward
silence.

"Oh, it's a game," he answered, making a
great effort, but not speaking then in his proper
voice. "And it's my stroke. Look," he said
to me quickly, "is that cannon possible?" and
he made it almost as he spoke. Two or three
more followed. Then a hazard. At last a bad
shot, and it was time for Miss Crawcour.

She came to her place at the table, and made a
violent effort to collect herself. I did not look
at her, but pretended to be absorbed in marking
Fortescue's score. I heard her cue strike the
ball in an uncertain way. There was no subsequent
sound indicating the contact of her ball
with one of the others. It was a miss. The
moment she had made it, she placed her cue
against the wall, and saying something
indistinctly about not being able to play, and about
my finishing the game instead of her, left the
billiard-room, closing the door after her.

As soon as she was gone, Fortescue came up
to where I stood.

"After what you've seen," he said, "it's no
use my attempting to make a secret of what
has been going on between Miss Crawcour and
myself."

"My dear Fortescue, I have no wish to force
myself on your confidence. "What I have seen,
can be for ever as if I had not seen it, if you
wish it. You know that."

"No, no, I don't wish it," he answered
quickly. "But come outside with me for half
a minute. We can't talk here."

Out in the open air, the rooks cawing about
the tree-tops as their nests waved to and fro in
the wind, he spoke again, as we lay on the grass.

"I dare say you have heard my name and Miss
Crawcour's spoken of together?—You have. I
don't know what right any one has had to talk
about either of us. However, that can't be helped."
He paused, and did not seem able to go on.

"I hate speaking of things of this sort," he
continued, after a moment, and in an impatient
tone, "one's words sound like words in a valentine
or a trashy novel. Well—it can't be helped.
I love this girl, Mary Crawcour. I would do
anything for her."

"And yet you could speak yesterday about
her marrying that man Sneyd."

"You were not then in my confidence. To
the world I must seem to favour that marriage.
I am pledged to do so."

"Pledged? To whom?"

"To the duchess."

"My dear Fortescue, how, in Heaven's name,
could you enter into so rash an engagement?"

"How? How could I do otherwise, you
mean? You know my position. I have two
hundred a year and my pay. Can I marry that
girl, accustomed to the life she is accustomed
to, on that? Have I a right to fetter her with
a long engagement, on the remote possibility of
my becoming possessed of property between
which and myself there are half a dozen lives?
Have I a right to stand in the way of such a
marriage as that with Sneyd? What could I say
when the duchess put these questions to me?"

"Do you believe that Miss Crawcour would be
happy in such a marriage?"

"I don't know," answered Fortescue, almost
desperately. "I have seen such misery come
from poverty in married life."

"Depend on it," I answered, "it is not the
worst evil, by many, many degrees. Fortescue,"
I continued, after a moment's pause, "does Miss
Crawcour love you?"

"I think so," he said, speaking in a low voice.

"Then depend on it you are doing wrong.
You are acting as you think rightly, and with a
great and noble self-denial. But you are
mistaken, cruelly, terribly mistaken, if you have
pledged yourself to favour this match with
Sneyd and to give up your own hold on that
young lady's love."

"I am pledged," Fortescue answered.

"To what?'

"To do nothing that is calculated to hinder the
marriage with Sneyd, and not to press my own
suit by word or deed for a period of five years—by
which time, of course, all chance will be over."

"And this was what you were telling Miss
Crawcour just now?"

"Something of it. She followed me to the
billiard-room. She seems desperate, reckless.
She swears she will not have him. I entreated
her to leave me—you saw the rest."

I said, after a moment's pause, "The conduct
of the duchess surprises me in this thing, I own.
She has such good points, I know. She is kind-
hearted—hospitable—"

"Yes, she is all that," said Fortescue,
interrupting me, "but she is touched by the world
like everybody else. Why, you don't know what
the notions of these people are. The things
that are necessaries of life to them—real
necessaries of life—require a fortune to provide them.
To a woman like the duchess, the existence which
such means as mine imply, seems what the
workhouse or absolute starvation appears to you.
When the duchess puts the case so to me, I tell
you, I am speechless."

"Fortescue," I said, after a long silence.
"These things being so, and this most rash and
miserable pledge being given what do you do
here?"

"I go to-morrow."

"Have you told Miss Crawcour that?"

"No, I have told no one. I mean to tell no
one. When the party goes out riding to-morrow
morning, I shall excuse myself, and—and leave
this place, most likely for ever. There is a row
in India I hear—perhaps I shall get rid of my
life there. It's at anybody's service."