Our beautiful and ingenious Lady Caroline was now in great consternation; and began to think that, after all, it might have been better to honestly confess the truth. But having reached this stage without discovery or suspicion, she determined to make another effort towards concealment; and a bright idea struck her as a means of securing it. I think I mentioned that, before she cast eyes on the unfortunate steward's clerk, he had been the beloved of a certain village damsel, the woodman's daughter, his neighbour, to whom he had paid some attentions; and possibly he was beloved of her still. At any rate, the Lady Caroline's influence on the estates of her father being considerable, she resolved to seek an interview with the young girl in furtherance of her plan to save her reputation, about which she was now exceedingly anxious; for by this time, the fit being over, she began to be ashamed of her mad passion for her late husband, and almost wished she had never seen him. In the course of her parish-visiting she lighted on the young girl without much difficulty, and found her looking pale and sad, and wearing a simple black gown, which she had put on out of respect for the young man's memory, whom she had tenderly loved, though he had not loved her. 'Ah, you have lost your lover, Milly,' said Lady Caroline. The young woman could not repress her tears. 'My lady, he was not quite my lover,' she said. 'But I was his--and now he is dead I don't care to live any more!' 'Can you keep a secret about him?' asks the lady; 'one in which his honour is involved--which is known to me alone, but should be known to you?' The girl readily promised, and, indeed, could be safely trusted on such a subject, so deep was her affection for the youth she mourned. 'Then meet me at his grave to-night, half-an-hour after sunset, and I will tell it to you,' says the other. In the dusk of that spring evening the two shadowy figures of the young women converged upon the assistant-steward's newly-turfed mound; and at that solemn place and hour, the one of birth and beauty unfolded her tale: how she had loved him and married him secretly; how he had died in her chamber; and how, to keep her secret, she had dragged him to his own door. 'Married him, my lady!' said the rustic maiden, starting back. 'I have said so,' replied Lady Caroline. 'But it was a mad thing, and a mistaken course. He ought to have married you. You, Milly, were peculiarly his. But you lost him.' 'Yes,' said the poor girl; 'and for that they laughed at me. "Ha--ha, you mid love him, Milly," they said; "but he will not love you!"' 'Victory over such unkind jeerers would be sweet,' said Lady Caroline. 'You lost him in life; but you may have him in death _as if_ you had had him in life; and so turn the tables upon them.' 'How?' said the breathless girl.