gave him a sharp pang. O God, how he had languished for a letter in that
handwriting!

He had nothing more to do after this in the neighbourhood of Lidford,
except to pay a pious visit to the Captain's grave, where a handsome slab
of granite recorded the virtues of the dead. It lay in the prettiest,
most retired part of the churchyard, half-hidden under a wide-spreading
yew. Gilbert Fenton sat down upon a low wall near at hand for a long
time, brooding over his broken life, and wishing himself at rest beneath
that solemn shelter.

"She never loved me," he said to himself bitterly. "I shut my eyes
obstinately to the truth, or I might have discovered the secret of her
indifference by a hundred signs and tokens. I fancied that a man who
loved a woman as I loved her must succeed in winning her heart at last.
And I accepted her girlish trust in me, her innocent gratitude for my
attentions, as the evidence of her love. Even at the last, when she
wanted to release me, I would not understand. I did not expect to be
loved as I loved her. I would have given so much, and been content to
take so little. What is there I would not have done--what sacrifice of my
own pride that I would not have happily made to win her! O my darling,
even in your desertion of me you might have trusted me better than this!
You would have found me fond and faithful through every trial, your
friend in spite of every wrong."

He knelt down by the grave, and pressed his lips to the granite on which
George Sedgewick's name was chiselled.

"I owe it to the dead to discover her fate," he said to himself, as he
rose from that reverent attitude. "I owe it to the dead to penetrate the