Pride, anger, wounded affection, all died away within her--only the woman
was left, the woman who loved him. Little by little she saw him only
through the blinding mist of her own tears.

Not one single word was spoken between them. What was there that they
could say to each other? Then suddenly she turned away, and went swiftly
back into the room she had just left, closing the door behind her.

It was empty. Lady Kynaston was gone. Vera stooped over the
writing-table, and, taking up a sheet of paper, she wrote in pencil:--

"Do not write to Sir John--it is beyond my strength--forgive me and
forget me. Vera." And then she went out through the other door,
and got herself away from the place in her hansom.

Twenty minutes later, when her bevy of chattering visitors had left her,
Lady Kynaston came back into her morning-room and found the little pencil
note left upon her writing-table. Wondering, perplexed and puzzled beyond
measure, she turned it over and over in her fingers.

What had happened? Why had Vera so suddenly altered her mind again? What
had influenced her? Half by accident, half, perhaps, with an instinct of
what was the truth, she softly opened the door of communication between
the morning-room and the dining-room, opened it for one instant, and then
drew back again, scared and shocked, closing it quickly and noiselessly.
What she had seen in the room was this--

Maurice, half stretched across the table, his face downwards upon his
arm, whilst those tearless, voiceless sobs, which are so terrible to
witness in a man, sobs which are the gasps of a despairing heart, shook