But happiness is a potent medicine.
They knew that ere long his relieved mind would succumb to its own weariness, so they darkened the room and kept very still, waiting anxiously for the moment when "tired nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep," should fold her pinions over his weary pillow.
Then Walter himself, weary and worn with a night's hard riding, stole from the room to seek rest and comfort on his own downy couch.
Outside the door he encountered his sister restlessly hovering in the hall, her fair face strangely pallid, a frightened gleam in her large, blue eyes.
"Walter," she whispered fearfully, "is it true what I heard you saying just now—that Lina Meredith is really found?"
"Yes, it is true," he answered. "Are you not glad, Violet?"
A strange expression that Walter could not understand, came over the pallid face of the girl.
"Found—I can scarcely credit it!" she cried out, in astonishment. "Come, Walter, I will go with you to your room, and you shall tell me all about it."
She went with him to his quiet room, but she could gain no more from him than she had already heard him telling Ronald Valchester. A look of disappointment came over her lovely, blonde face. She left Walter and went away to her own room, where she threw herself down upon her snowy couch and wept the bitterest tears that had ever fallen from those lovely eyes.
"Gerald Huntington has played me false," she told herself. "He has let her go after all the risks I ran for him. Oh! how could he be so base, so cruel? What shall I do now? Oh, what shall I do?"