As Sir Karl Andinnian was leaving the house, he saw Colonel and Mrs. Cleeve in the dining-room. The latter held out her hand to Karl. He clasped it warmly.

"I am glad it is settled," she said, in a low, impressive tone. "You will take good care of her, I know, and make her happy."

"With the best energies of my heart and life," was his earnest answer. "Dear Mrs. Cleeve, I can never sufficiently thank you."

The voices penetrated to a dressing-chamber at the end of the short passage, the door of which was ajar. A lady in travelling attire peeped out. It was Miss Blake, who had just arrived from England somewhat unexpectedly. Karl passed out at the front door. Miss Blake\'s eyes, wide open with astonishment, followed him.

"Surely that was Captain Andinnian!" she exclaimed, advancing towards the dining-room.

"Captain Andinnian that used to be, Theresa," replied Colonel Cleeve. "He is Sir Karl Andinnian now."

"Yes, yes; but one is apt to forget new titles," was her impatient rejoinder. "I heard he was staying in Paris. What should bring him in this house? Is he allowed to call at it."

"For the future he will be. He is to have Lucy. Mrs. Cleve will tell you about it," concluded the Colonel. "I must write my letters."

Mrs. Cleeve was smiling meaningly. Theresa Blake, utterly puzzled, looked from one to the other. "Have Lucy!" she cried. "Have her for what?"

"Why, to be his wife," said Mrs. Cleeve. "Could you not have guessed, Theresa?"

"To--be--his--wife!" echoed Miss Blake. "Karl Andinnian\'s wife! No, no; it cannot be."

"But it is, Theresa. It has been settled to-day. Sir Karl has now gone out from his first interview with her. Why, my dear, I quite believe that if we had not brought it about, Lucy would have died. They are all the world to each other."

Miss Blake went back to her room with her shock of agony. From white to scarlet, from scarlet to white, changed her face, as she sat down to take in the full sense of the news, and what it inflicted on her. A cry went up aloud to Heaven for pity, as she realized the extreme depth of her desolation.

This second blow was to Miss Blake nearly, if not quite, as cruel as the first had been. It stunned her. The hope that Karl Andinnian would return to her had been dwelt on and cherished as the weeks had gone on, until it became as a certainty in her inmost heart. Of course, his accession to wealth and honours augmented the desirability of a union with him, though it could not augment her love. She had encouraged the secret passion within her; she had indulged in sweet dreams of the future; she had rashly cherished an assurance that she should, sooner or later, become Sir Karl\'s wife. To find that he was indeed to have Lucy was truly terrible.

Miss Blake had undergone disappointment on another score. The new modes of worship in Mr. Blake\'s church, together with the Reverend Guy Cattacomb, had collapsed. Matters had gone on swimmingly until the month of December. Close upon Christmas the rector came home: it should, perhaps, be mentioned that his old curate had died. Mr. Blake was hardly fit to return to his duties; but the reports made to him of the state of things in his church (they had been withheld during his want of strength), brought him back in grief and shame. His first act was to dismiss the Rev. Guy Cattacomb: his second to sweep away innovations and restore the service to what it used to be. Miss Blake angrily resented this but she was unable to hinder it. Her occupation in Winchester was gone; she was for the present grown tired of the place, and considered whither her steps should be next directed. She had a standing invitation to visit the Cleeves, and felt inclined to do so; for she loved the gay Parisian capital with all her heart. Chance threw her in the way of Captain Lamprey. She heard from him that Sir Karl Andinnian was in Paris; and it need not be stated that the information caused the veering scale to go down with a run. Without writing to apprise Colonel and Mrs. Cleeve, she started. And, in the first few minutes of her arrival at their house, she was gratified by the sight of Karl; and heard at the same time the startling tidings that destroyed her hopes for ever.

It was like a fate. Comme un sort, as Mademoiselle Aglaé might have phrased it. Only a few months before, when Miss Blake got home to Winchester from Paris, her heart leaping and bounding with its love for Karl Andinnian, and with the prospect of again meeting him, she had been struck into stone at finding that his love was Lucy\'s; so now, hastening to Paris from Winchester with somewhat of the same kind of feelings, and believing he had bade adieu to Lucy for ever, she found that the aspect of matters had altered, and Lucy was to be the wife of his bosom. Miss Blake\'s state of mind under this shock was not an enviable one. And--whereas she had hitherto vented her silent anger on Lucy, woman fashion, she now turned it on Karl. What right, she asked herself, forgetting the injustice of the question, what right had he to go seeking Lucy in Paris, when she had been so unequivocally denied to him for ever? It was a worse blow to her than the first had been.

Waiting until the trace of some of the anguish had passed from her white face, until she had arranged her hair and changed her travelling dress, and regained composure of manner, she went into the presence of Colonel and Mrs. Cleeve. They were yet in the dining-room, talking of Lucy\'s future prospects; getting, in fact, with every word more and more reconciled to them.

"The alliance will be an everlasting disgrace to you," quietly spoke Miss Blake. "It will degrade Lucy."

"I do not see it, Theresa," said the Colonel. "I do not think any sensible people will see it in that light. And consider Lucy\'s state of health! Something had to be sacrificed to that. This may, and I believe will, restore her; otherwise she would have died. The love they bear for each other is marvellous--quite out of the common."

Theresa bit her pale lips to get a little colour in them. "A min whose brother was tried and condemned for wilful murder, and who died a convict striving to escape from his lawful fetters! He is no proper match for Lucy Cleeve."

"The man is dead, Theresa. His crimes and mistakes have died with him. Had he lived, the convict, we would have followed Lucy to the grave rather than allowed one of the Andinnian family to enter ours."

Theresa played with a tremendously big wooden cross of black wood, that she wore appended to a long necklace of black beads--the whole thing most incongruously unbecoming, and certainly not in the best of taste in any point of view. That she looked pale, vexed, disturbed, Colonel and Mrs. Cleeve saw: and they set it down in their honest and simple hearts to her anxiety for Lucy.

"Against Sir Karl Andinnian nothing can be urged, Theresa: and his brother, as I say, is dead," pursued the Colonel. "In himself he is everything that can be desired: a sweet-tempered, honourable gentleman. He is a baronet of the realm now, you know; and his proposed settlement on Lucy is good."

"I don\'t call him rich," doggedly returned Miss Blake. "Compare him with some baronets."

"And compare him, on the other hand, with others! His income averages about seven thousand a-year, I believe. Out of that he will accord his mother a good portion while she lives. Compare that with my income, Theresa--as we are on the subject of comparisons; I cannot count anything like two thousand."

"Are you sure that he is worthy of Lucy in other ways?" resumed Miss Blake, her tone unpleasantly significant. "I have heard tales of him."

"What tales?"

"Words dropped from the officers at Winchester. To the effect that he is wild."

"I can hardly believe that he is," said the Colonel, uneasily, after a pause. "I should dislike to give Lucy to any man of that kind."

"Oh, well, it may not be true," returned Miss Blake, her suggestive conscience reminding her that she was saying more than she ought: or, rather, giving a colouring to it that she was not altogether justified in. "You know little Dennet. More than a year ago--it was before I went abroad--he was talking at the rectory one day about the officers generally, hinting that they were unsteady. I said--of course it was an absurd thing for me to say--that I felt sure Mr. Andinnian was steady: and Dennet rejoined, in a laughing kind of way, that Andinnian was as wild as the rest. That\'s the truth," concluded Miss Blake, honestly, in obedience to her conscience.

Not very much, you will think; but Colonel Cleeve did not like the doubt it implied; and he resolved to set it at rest, if questioning could do it. That same evening, when Karl arrived to dinner, as invited, the Colonel caused him to be shown into a little apartment, that was as much a boot-closet as anything else: but they were cramped for room in the Avenue D\'Antin. Colonel Cleeve was standing by the fire. He and Karl were very much alike in one particular--that of unsophistication. In his direct, non-reticent manner, he mentioned the hint he had received, giving as nearly as possible the words Theresa had given.

"Is it true, or is it not, Sir Karl?"

"It is not true: at least, in the sense that I fear you may have been putting upon it," was the reply: and Karl Andinnian\'s truthful eyes went straight out to the Colonel\'s. "When I was with the regiment I did some foolish things, sir, as the others did, especially when I first joined: a young fellow planted down in the midst of careless men can hardly avoid it, however true his own habits and principles may be. But I soon drew in. When my father lay on his dying bed, he gave me some wise counsel, Colonel Cleeve."

"Did you follow it?"

"If I did not quite always, I at any rate mostly tried to. Had I been by inclination one of the wildest of men, events would have surely sobered me. My acquaintance with Lucy, the love for her that grew up in my heart, would have served to keep me steady; and since then there has been that most dreadful blow and its attendant sorrow. But I was not wild by inclination: quite the contrary. On my word, Colonel Cleeve, I have not gone into the reckless vice and folly that some men go into; no, not even in my days of youth and carelessness. I can truly say that I have never in my life done a wrong thing but I
have been bitterly ashamed of it afterwards, whatever its nature;
and--and--have asked forgiveness of God."

His voice died away with the last hesitating sentence. That he was asserting the truth as before Heaven, Colonel Cleeve saw, and judged him rightly. He took Karl\'s hands in his: he felt that he was one amid a thousand.

"God keep you, for a true man and a Christian!" he whispered. "I could not desire one more worthy than you for my daughter."

When they reached the drawing-room, Lucy was there: Lucy, who had not joined in the late dinner for some time past. She wore pink silk; she had a transient colour in her face, and her sweet brown eyes lighted up at sight of Karl. As he bent low to speak to her, Theresa Blake covered her brow, as though she had a pain there.

"Madame est servie."

Sir Karl advanced to Mrs. Cleeve, as in duty bound. She put him from her with a smile. "I am going on by myself, Karl. Lucy needs support, and you must give it her. The Colonel has to bring Miss Blake."

And as Karl took her, nothing loth, under his arm, and gave her the support tenderly, Miss Lucy blushed the rosiest blush that had been seen in her face for many a month. Mademoiselle Aglaé, superintending the arrangement of the round table, had taken care that their seats should be side by side. Theresa\'s fascinated eyes, opposite, looked at them more than there was any need for.

"Lucy has got a prize," whispered the Col............