PARTED.
alf an hour had passed.
Up and down the long drawing-room Aileen wandered, aimlessly, restlessly, oppressed with an overwhelming dread of, she knew not what, a prescience of evil, vague as it was terrible. The dark gloom of the rainy evening was not darker than that brooding shadow in her deep, dusky eyes.
In the library Colonel Jocyln stood facing his son-in-law elect, staring like a man bereft of his senses. The melancholy half light coming wanly through the oriel window by which he stood, fell full upon the face of Rupert Thetford, white and cold, and set as marble.
"My God!" the Indian officer said, with wild eyes of terror and affright, "what is this you are telling me?"
"The truth, Col. Jocyln—the simple truth. Would to Heaven I had known it years ago—this shameful story of wrong-doing and misery!"
"I don't comprehend—I can't comprehend this impossible tale, Sir Rupert."
"That is a misnomer now, Colonel Jocyln. I am no longer Sir Rupert."
"Do you mean to say you credit this wild story of a former marriage of Sir Noel's? Do you really believe your late governess to have been your father's wife?"