“Be reasonable.  Mary Damer really found it out.  His guilty restless conscience forced him to tell her the story, though to be sure he put the wrong on people he did not name.  But I knew so much of the mystery of your love sorrow, as to put the two stories together, and find them fit.  Then I wrote to Cornelia.”

“How long ago?”

“About two months.”

“Why then did you not give me hope ere this?”

“I would not give you hope, till hope was certain.  Two years is a long time in a girl’s life.  It was a possible thing for Cornelia to have forgotten—­to have changed.”

“Impossible!  Quite impossible!  She could not forget.  She could not change.  Why did you not tell me?  I should have known her heart by mine own.”

“I wished to be sure,” repeated Annie, a little sadly.

“Forgive me, dear Annie.  But this news throws me into an unspeakable condition.  You see that I must leave for America at once.”

“No.  I do not see that, George.”

“But if you consider—­”

“I have been considering for two months.  Let me decide for you now, for you are not able to do so wisely.  Write at once to Cornelia, that is your duty as well as your pleasure.  But before you go to her, there are things indispensable to be done.  Will you ask Doctor Moran for his child, and not be able to show him that you can care for her as she deserves to be cared for?  Lawyers will not be hurried, there will be consultations, and engrossings, and signings, and love—­in your case—­ will have to wait upon law.”

“’Tis hard for love, and harder perhaps for anger to wait.  For I am in a passion of wrath at Van Ariens.  I long to be near him.  Oh what suffering his envy and hatred have caused others!”

“And himself also.  Be sure of that, or he had not tried to find some ease in a kind of confession.  Doctor Roslyn will tell you that it is an eternal law, that wherever sin is, sorrow will answer it.”

“The man is hateful to me.”

“He has done a thing that makes him hateful; but perhaps for all that, he has been so miserable about it, as to have the pity of the Uncondemning One.  I hear your father coming.  I am sure you will have his sympathy in all things.”

She left the room as the Earl entered it.  He was in unusually high spirits.  Some political news had delighted him, and without noticing his son’s excitement he said—­

“The Commons have taken things in their own hands, George.  I said they would.  They listen to the King and the Lords very respectfully, and then obey themselves.  Most of the men in the Lower House are unfit to enter it.”

“Well, sir, the Lords as a rule send them there—­you have sent three of them yourself—­and unfit men in public places, suppose prior unfitness in those who have the places to dispose of.  But the government is not interesting.  I have something else, father, to think about.”