“Make your mind easy. Unjust laws are a dead letter on a soil so primitive as ours. I shall talk to Uxmoor and a few more, and no magistrate will ever summons you, nor jury convict you, in Barfordshire. You will be as safe there as in Upper Canada. Now then--attend. We leave for Barfordshire to-morrow. You will go down on the first of next month. By that time all will be ready: start for Taddington, eleven o'clock. You will be met at the Taddington Station, and taken to your farmhouse. You will find a fire ten days old, and, for once in your life, young lady, you will find an aired bed; because my man Harris will be house-maid, and not let one of your homicidal sex set foot in the crib.” Miss Gale looked from Vizard to his sister, like a person in a dream. She was glowing with happiness; but it did not spoil her. She said, humbly and timidly, “I hope I may prove worthy.” “That is _your_ business,” said Vizard, with supreme indifference; “mine is to be just. Have a cup of tea?” “Oh, no, thank you; and it will be a part of my duty to object to afternoon tea. But I am afraid none of you will mind me.” After a few more words, in which Severne, seeing Vizard was in one of his iron moods, and immovable as him of Rhodes, affected now to be a partisan of the new arrangement, Miss Gale rose to retire. Severne ran before her to the door, and opened it, as to a queen. She bowed formally to him as she went out. When she was on the other side the door, she turned her head in her sharp, fiery way, and pointed with her finger to the emerald ring on his little finger, a very fine one. “Changed hands,” said she: “it was on the third finger of your left hand when we met last;” and she passed down the stairs with a face half turned to him, and a cruel smile. Severne stood fixed, looking after her; cold crept among his bones: he was roused by a voice above him saying, very inquisitively, “What does she say?” He looked up, and it was Fanny Dover leaning over the balusters of the next landing. She had evidently seen all, and heard some. Severne had no means of knowing how much. His heart beat rapidly. Yet he told her, boldly, that the doctress had admired his emerald ring: as if to give greater force to this explanation, he took it off, and showed it her, very amicably. He calculated that she could hardly, at that distance, have heard every syllable, and, at the same time, he was sure she had seen Miss Gale point at the ring. “Hum!” said Fanny; and that was all she said.