But Miss Charteris rarely yielded to any emotion; she had laid her hand in his and said: "Goodbye, Ronald--God bless you! Be brave; it is not one great deed that makes a hero.

The man who bears trouble well is the greatest hero of all." As he left his home in that quiet starlit night, Ronald little thought that, while his mother lay weeping as though her heart would break, a beautiful face, wet with bitter tears, watched him from one of the upper windows, and his father, shut up alone, listened to every sound, and heard the door closed behind his son as he would have heard his own death knell.
The next day Lady Charteris and her daughter left Earlescourt.

Lord Earle gave no sign of the heavy blow which had struck him.

He was their attentive host while they remained; he escorted them to their carriage, and parted from them with smiling words.

Then he went back to the house, where he was never more to hear the sound of the voice he loved best on earth.
As the days and months passed, and the young heir did not return, wonder and surprise reigned at Earlescourt.