Devereux’s move was very sudden, and the news did not reach the Elms till his groom had gone on to Island-bridge with the horses, and he himself, booted and spurred, knocked at the door. The doctor was not at home; he had ridden into Dublin. Of course it was chiefly to see him he had gone there.

‘And Miss Walsingham?’

She was also out; no, not in the garden. John thought maybe at old Miss Chattesworth’s school; or, Sally said, maybe at Belmont; they did not know.

Devereux looked into the large room at the right hand of the hall, with the fair sad portrait of Lilias’s young mother smiling, from the wall. Like her, too — and the tall glasses of flowers — and the harpsichord open, with the music she would play, just as usual, that evening, he supposed; and he stood at the door, looking round the room, booted and spurred, as I have said, with his cocked hat held to his breast, in a reverie. It was not easy for old Sally to guess what was passing in his mind, for whenever he was sad he smiled, but with the somewhat of bitter in his smile, and when he suffered he used to joke.

Just at that moment Lilias Walsingham was walking along the high street of the village to the King’s House, and stopping to say a good-natured little word to old Jenny Creswell, was overtaken by mild Mrs. Sturk, who was walking her little menagerie into the park.

‘And oh! dear Miss Walsingham, did you hear the news? she said; ‘Captain Devereux is gone to England, and I believe we sha’n’t see him here again.’

Lilias felt that she grew pale, but she patted one of the children on the head, and smiled, and asked him some foolish little question.

‘But why don’t you listen, dear Miss Lilias? You don’t hear, I think,’ said Mrs. Sturk.

‘I do hear, indeed; when did he go?’ she asked, coldly enough.

‘About half an hour ago,’ Mrs. Sturk thought: and so, with a word or two more, and a kissing of hands, the good lady turned, with her brood, up the park lane, and Lily walked on to pay her visit to Mrs. Colonel Stafford, feeling all the way a strange pang of anger and disappointment.

‘To think of his going away without taking leave of my father!’

And when she reached the hall-door of the King’s House for a moment she forgot what she had come for, and was relieved to find that good Mrs. Strafford was in town.

There was then, I don’t know whether there is not now, a little path leading by the river bank from Chapelizod to Island-bridge, just an angler’s footpath, devious and broken, but withal very sweet and pretty. Leaving the King’s House, she took this way home, and as she walked down to the river bank, the mortified girl looked down upon the grass close by her feet, and whispered to the daisies as she went along —‘No, there’s no more kindness nor friendliness left in the world; the people are all cold creatures now, and hypocrites; and I’m glad he’s gone.’

She paused at the stile which went over the hedge just beside an old fluted pier, with a grass-grown urn at top, and overgrown with a climbing rose-tree, just such a study as a young lady might put in her album; and then she recollected the long letter from old Miss Wardle that Aunt Becky had sent her to read, with a request, which from that quarter was a command, that she should return it by six o’clock, for Aunt Becky, even in matters indifferent, liked to name hours, and nail people sharp and hard to futile appointments and barren punctualities.

She paused at the stile; she liked the old pier; its partner next the river was in fragments, and the ruin and the survivor had both been clothed by good Mrs. Strafford — who drew a little, and cultivated the picturesque — with the roses I have mentioned, besides woodbine and ivy. She had old Miss Wardle’s letter in her hand, full, of course, of shocking anecdotes about lunatics, and the sufferings of Fleet prisoners, and all the statistics, and enquiries, and dry little commissions, with which that worthy lady’s correspondence abounded. It was open in her hand, and rustled sharp and stiffly in the air, but it was not inviting just then. From that point it was always a pretty look down or up the river; and her eyes followed with the flow of its waters towards Inchicore. She loved the river; and in her thoughts she wondered why she loved it — so cold, so unimpressible — that went shining and rejoicing away into the sea. And just at that moment she heard a sweet tenor, with a gaiety somehow pathetic, sing not far away the words she remembered —

‘And she smiled upon the stream, Like one that smiles at folly, A dreamer on a dream.’

Devereux was coming — it was his playful salutation. Her large eyes dropped to the ground with the matchless blush of youth. She was strangely glad, but vexed at having changed colour; but when he came up with her, in the deep shadow thrown by the old pier, with its thick festooneries, he could not tell, he only knew she looked beautiful.

‘My dreams take wing, but my follies will not leave me. And you have been ill, Miss Lilias?’

‘Oh, nothing; only a little cold.’

‘And I am going — I only knew last night — really going away.’ He paused; but the young lady did not feel called upon to say anything, and only allowed him to go on. In fact, she was piqued, and did not choose to show the least concern about his movements. ‘And I’ve a great mind now that I’m depar............