"Your correspondent laboured under a mistake, Rose; you may tell her so, for her satisfaction. Sarah Beauclerc will very soon be a wife, but not mine."
"Who is she going to marry?"
"Lord Raynor."
Rose exhausted her surprise in ejaculations. She had thought Sarah Beauclerc would be Frederick St. John's chosen wife; had felt utterly certain of it in her own mind. He sat in silence, never heeding her. Remembrances of the past were crowding upon him. That he had been very near loving Sarah Beauclerc, was indisputable: and but for the meeting with Adeline, this might have come to fruition: there was no knowing now. At Lady Revel's--the evening spoken of to Rose by Miss Mary Anne Darling--he had learnt that she, Sarah, was going to be married to the Viscount Raynor, a man who, as Captain Budd, had been attached to her for years. She herself told him of this. In her calm, cold, cutting manner, she spoke of his contemplated marriage to Mademoiselle de Castella: was any covert reproof intended in this? any secret intimation that that justified her own engagement? However that might be, all chance of their being one in this world, had any such chance ever existed, was at an end; and Frederick St. John had no regret left in regard to it. All his regrets were for another.
"If Adeline had but known it!" murmured Rose, genuine tears of vexation filling her eyes. "Did you not know she was dying, Mr. St. John?"
"No. I knew nothing about her."
"Have you been in England ever since you quitted us that day?"
"I went straight to London from Beaufoy, saw my brother Isaac, explained matters to him, and then accompanied him to Castle Wafer. Subsequently I went to Scotland, deer-stalking; running over once to London from thence, to see my mother. Before Christmas, I was again for a week in London, and then I escorted my mother to Castle Wafer. Now you know what my movements have been, Rose. I heard nothing of Adeline."
"Perhaps you kept yourself out of the way of hearing of her?"
"I did."