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declared its independence from Spain. There is bound to be fighting. General Miranda has gone as well, to command the South American troops.”
    “South America,” she said again, slowly this time.  She felt bitterness surge through her heart. Never, it seemed to her, would she forgive him for this. She stood still, with a hard, frozen face, and let Douglas’s words wash over her. Finally a phrase of his penetrated her consciousness. “What did you say?” she asked.
    “I said that one of the reasons he went was, as he put it, ‘there is nothing for me at home.’ “
    There was a blank silence and then Frances blindly raised her hands toward him. He moved quickly to take her in his arms, feeling her hold to him fiercely as the sobs of deep, terrible grief shook her. “It will be all right,” he found himself saying. “He will come back.” But she sobbed on and refused to be comforted.
     
     
     

Chapter Nine
     
    0 how can I be blithe and glad,
    Or how can I gang brisk and braw, When the bonnie lad that I lo’e best
    Is o’er the hills and far away?
    — ROBERT BURNS
     
    Robert Sedburgh had gone home to Aysgarth after he left Wick, and when he returned to London a month later it was with the thought of reporting to the Horse Guards with the news that he was ready to return to Portugal. The information that Ian Macdonald had left for South America sent him round to Hanover Square in a hurry. For the first time in a month, hope flickered in his heart. He had been so sure she was going to marry Macdonald.
     He found Frances sitting with her aunt in the drawing room. She looked pale but she smiled when she saw him and asked him to be seated.              “What does Frances Stewart look like?” his mother had asked curiously, having heard reports from his aunts in London.  As he looked now at the blonde head of the girl before him, he mentally shook his head. There was no describing Frances.
    She talked with him calmly and amusingly and said yes, she was going to Mrs. Carstairs’s ball that evening and yes, she would save a dance for him. As he left his brow was faintly puckered. On the surface she seemed the same, but the springing vitality he had so loved was gone. He had never seen her so subdued.
    He watched her carefully for a week and then, having prepared Lady Mary, he called in Hanover Square and was allowed to see her alone.
       “I asked you a question some months ago, Miss Stewart,” he said steadily. “You begged me at the time not to pressure you for an immediate answer. I have obeyed your wishes but I have not forgotten. Do you feel it possible to answer me now?”
    She refused to meet his eyes. “I cannot marry you, my lord,” she said in a voice so low he could barely hear it.
    Lord Robert had been a very good soldier. He decided it was time to go on the attack. “Why not?” he asked unexpectedly.
    She moved restlessly to the window with her lithe long walk. She fingered the velvet drapes. “Because I don’t love you.”
    “I love you,” he answered quietly. “Don’t you think, perhaps, you might learn to love me in return? I can be very persuasive.”
    At last she looked at him. His blue eyes were tender as they rested on her troubled face. It was the tenderness that broke her. She bent her head and he saw the heavy tears falling on her hands as she held to the velvet drapery. “Frances!” He crossed the room swiftly to stand beside her and she raised her tear-streaked face to his.
    “I can’t marry you, my lord,” she repeated. “I can’t marry anyone. Not now.”
    “Not now.” At those words a vivid picture flashed in his mind, of Ian touching Frances with a smile. His voice was uncharacteristically rough as he asked, “What did he do to you?”
    Her eyes widened until they were great liquid pools of green. He was standing over her so that his shoulders blotted out the rest of the room, but his aspect was not at all menacing. Rather, it was strangely