“You do not think he will return, then?”

“Never,” said Miss Grafton, in a choking voice.

“And I grieve to tell you, Mary, that he will find yonder his happiness destroyed, his mistress lost to him.

His honor even has not escaped. What will be left him, then, Mary, equal to your affection? Answer, Mary, you who know yourself so well.”

Miss Grafton placed her white hand on Buckingham’s arm, and, while Raoul was hurrying away with headlong speed, she repeated in dying accents the line from Romeo and Juliet:

“I must be gone and live, or stay and die.”

As she finished the last word, Raoul disappeared.