'Before I sail to-morrow.' The words turned his mind into a new train of thought. Absorbed, he let his chin recline upon his breast, and did not notice Helen's entrance at the other end of the supper-room. She was clad in a loose dressing-gown and looked lovely, with her hair hanging around her shoulders.
When she had progressed halfway up the room, her eyes were attracted by something shining on the ground just in front of her. Stooping and picking the object up, she found it to be a portion of a sleeve-link, an engraved cameo in a gold setting; the gold work had been twisted and broken under the feet of the throng. All this Helen saw at a glance; but placing it in the pocket of her dressing-gown, she thought no more of it, and entered the library to join her husband.
[CHAPTER III.]
THE SHADOW OF PARTING.
So absorbed was Alston in his rumination, that it was not until he felt Helen's gentle touch upon his shoulder that he was aware of her presence.
'Has my melancholy been infectious?' said she, bending tenderly over him, and bringing her face close to his. 'Is it possible that what I said about your going could have turned your thoughts in the same direction?'
'Not at all,' said he, with a half smile; 'my thoughts were of quite another kind. I was thinking--'
'Hush!' she said, laying her little hand softly on his lips. 'Don't say you were thinking of business; that hated rival displaces me in your mind far too much as it is, but to give up to it such moments as these would be sacrilege. I will be your sole consideration now, until--until--'
'Until the end of my life,' said Alston, passing his arm tenderly round her; 'and your jealousy of my absence and all those connected with it is a mere pretence, a playful pastime, as you very well know.'
'Let us settle it so,' said Helen, 'and quit the subject. Meanwhile,' she said, taking from her pocket a morocco case, 'I have a present for you, Alston, and one,' placing it in his hand, 'which I think you will like.'