"I think I explained to you why I did not tell you before; it was for my poor old father's sake."
"It makes it awfully hard for us."
"It shall not be harder than I can help, Lady Violet; you need not be afraid that I shall presume upon our former acquaintance. I know my altered position, and I shall never forget it, I hope. Good-bye."
"Good-bye, Captain Fortescue."
She did not even shake hands with him as she said it, but ran swiftly upstairs, and Kenneth passed on through the marble hall to the carriage waiting at the door.
Captain Berington was most friendly during the drive, but did not allude to the conversation that had taken place in his mother's boudoir, until he was standing at the carriage door just before the train started. Then he grasped Kenneth's hand, and said—
"You and I can still be friends, Fortescue; of course the mater has to be particular for the girls' sake, and my brother, the Earl (you've never met him, I think), is more particular still; he's obliged to be, I suppose. But I'm only a younger son, so can do as I like. Good-bye."
The train moved off before Kenneth could answer, and as it left the station behind, he felt that, in spite of Captain Berington's friendly words, he had read the very last line of the last page of Volume I of his life-story, and had come to Finis.
But as the Captain journeyed on to Aldershot, and recalled Lady Violet's words, "It makes it awfully hard for us," he could not help contrasting them with other words, spoken by another voice, only ten days before, "Please don't think about us; it is quite hard enough for you."
And, as he thought of the difference between the two remarks, he mourned less than he would otherwise have done over the Finis which he had read at the bottom of that last page.