He rises early, and long before the late breakfast hour Lady Vera's maid brings him a sealed note. He tears it hastily open, and her betrothal ring falls sparkling into his hand.
"Dear Philip," she writes, "I return your ring. A terrible barrier has risen between us that all our love can never bridge over. So we must part. And, oh! believe me, dearest, it breaks my heart to write it. One thing I would ask you, Philip—will you go away from here and save me the sorrow of meeting you again? I can bear my misery and my impending shame far better if I cannot see you whom I have so fondly loved, and must so fatefully resign.
"Your Wretched Vera."
"Has my darling grown mad?" the handsome soldier asks himself, staring almost stupidly at the note and the ring in his hand. "What shame can touch her, my beautiful, pure-hearted one? She is going to be ill, perhaps, and this is but the vagary of a mind diseased."
So he writes back impulsively:
"Vera, let me see you for even ten minutes. Surely, my darling, you do not mean what you say. What shame can touch you, my innocent love? And why should you wish to send me away? Is it not my right and duty and desire to stand by your side through all the trials of life?
"'Oh! what was love made for if 'tis not the same,
Through joy and through torment, through glory and shame?'"Do not ask me to leave you, darling. If indeed sorrow and trouble are near you, my place is by your side. I will wait for you half an hour in the library. Do not fail me, dear. I want to put your ring back upon your finger.
"Your Own Philip."
Lady Vera weeps bitterly over her lover's note.
"Ah, he does not know, he does not dream of the fatal truth," she moans, wildly. "And what can I say to him? I cannot, I will not tell him. I could not do it. I should die of the shame. He will know too soon as it is. And yet I must go to him. He will not be denied. Oh! what shall I say to him, my poor boy?"
Weeping and lingering, dreading to go, the half-hour is almost up before she drags herself to the library where Philip is pacing up and down the floor in a fever of doubt and suspense.
"Vera, my darling," he cries. "Oh, how could you treat me so cruelly?"
She pauses with her arms folded over the back of a chair, and regards him sorrowfully. Colonel Lockhart can see that she has been weeping bitterly. Her tremulous lips part to answer him, then close without a sound.