It is unnecessary to mention that the adieus were not
accomplished without a certain amount of tears; but they were all shed
by Fanny Molyneux. Cecil dared not yet trust herself to weep. She took a
far more formal farewell of Mr. Fullarton, and the chaplain did not even
venture a parting benediction.
The heavy traveling-chariot, with its hundred cunning contrivances, is
packed at last, and Karl, the accomplished courier, wiping from his
blonde mustache the drops of the stirrup-cup, touches his cap with his
accustomed formula, "Zi ces dames zont bretes?" Mark Waring leans over
the carriage door to say "Good-by:" the hand he presses lies in his
grasp, unresponsive and unsympathetic as a splinter from an iceberg. His
sad, earnest look pleads in vain, for there is no softening or kindness
in Cecil's desolate, dreamy eyes. The road on which they are to travel
is the same for some leagues as that along which Royston Keene must
return, and she is thinking, divided between hope and fear, if there may
not be a possibility of their meeting. The wheels move, and hasty
farewells are waved, and Mark stands there half stupefied, unconscious
of any thing but a sense of lonely wretchedness.
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