If he should be angry, she thought; or if he should be engaged and unable to see her, how could she face the other without knowing the worst, or the best? And if the best, what then? Her life seemed to have become a tangled coil which she had no power of unravelling. In about half an hour she saw the hedger, Tom, shambling down the dell with a white envelope in his hands. She rushed forward feverishly to intercept him. It was stamped with the earl’s coronet. Nell tore it open and devoured its contents. ‘MY DEAR MISS LLEWELLYN,--If you will be in Mrs Hody’s sitting-room at eleven o’clock, I will come to you there for a few minutes.--Yours faithfully, ‘ILFRACOMBE.’ He would see her, then; she would see him! All, for the moment, seemed bright again. Her parents were delighted with the news. ‘There, now, what did I tell ye?’ said Mr Llewellyn; ‘I knew no gentleman, let alone a lord, would refuse to see a servant as had done her duty by him. You’ve done the job now, Nell, as sure as a gun. The earl will persuade Sir Archibald to lower the rent again, and mother and me will feel we owe it all to you. Give me a buss, lass! It’s summat for a man to have such a handsome daughter to boast of. They may say as beauty’s deceitful, but it beats brains any day. You’ve saved the old farm to us, my girl, and I’m thankful to you for it.’ ‘I’ll do my best, dear father,’ said Nell; ‘but you mustn’t make too sure. The earl, with all the good-will in the world, may not have the power, but I’m sure he’ll try to get it done.’ ‘And when did you ever hear of a lord trying for anything that didn’t succeed?’ exclaimed her mother; ‘it isn’t as if he was a nobody! But come, my lass, you mustn’t go up to the Hall in that soiled dress. You’ve a clean print in your drawers, so go and put it on, and make your hair tidy. It looks as if you’d been up all night.’ And the old woman bundled her daughter upstairs to look after her wardrobe. ‘Now, where did you put that nasty poison?’ she asked, as they entered the bedroom together. ‘Where you told me, mother; on the top of the wardrobe,’ answered Nell. ‘Have you written a label for it yet?’ ‘No; I forgot to do so.’ ‘Well, don’t you put it off another day,’ replied Mrs Llewellyn; ‘for father was quite vexed with me for letting the bottle go out of my hands. He says a wineglassful of that stuff would kill the strongest man in Monmouth.’ ‘No one can get at it there,’ said Nell, quietly. ‘That’s all right then, but I shouldn’t like for there to be an accident with it. Here, Nell, tie this blue silk handkerchief round your throat. You always look so nice in blue, I think.’ Nell assented passively to all her mother’s propositions, and, putting a straw hat on her head, walked slowly up the meadow and through the pine plantation, to the private apartments of the housekeeper at the Hall.