"Ah! it's gone where Miss Bonnibel's blue eyes will never shine on it," said she. "It'll never see the light of day again. All that she can do is to marry Colonel Carlyle and get even with them all." "I wish she would," sighed Lucy; "but I don't believe she will. They said she was in love with a young artist last summer, and that her uncle drove him away--the same young man they laid the murder on, you know." "Do you believe he did it, Lucy?" "Not I," said Lucy, with a scornful sniff. "I'd sooner believe _they_ did it between themselves! I've seen the young man when he used to come visiting the master at Sea View. A handsome young man he was, and that soft-spoken he would not hurt a fly, I know. But he was poor and made his living by drawing pictures, and since Miss Bonnibel is poor, too, now, I'd rather she'd marry that rich old man, for, poor dear, what good could _she_ do as a poor man's wife!" "Has she forgotten the young feller, do you think?" inquired Janet, thinking of her own "young feller" below stairs with a thrill of romantic sympathy for Miss Vere's love affair. "Oh, dear, _no_, and never _will_," said Lucy, confidently. "She never names him; but I know she's been grieved and unhappy over and above what natural grief for Mr. Arnold could amount to. But I doubt it's all over between them. He's been in hiding, of course, somewhere, ever since they accused him of the murder, and I doubt if Miss Bonnibel ever sets her sweet blue eyes on his handsome face again." "If he's not guilty why don't he come out and prove his innocence?" exclaimed the romantic Janet. "What a fine scene there would be--Miss Bonnibel all in smiles and tears of joy, and t'other ones scowling and angry at them two lovers." "Ah! I can't tell you _why_ he doesn't do so," answered Lucy, sighing; "but there must be some good reason for't. No one could get me to believe that Mr. Dane did that wicked and cruel murder! My young mistress, so innocent as she is herself, could never have loved a man that was mean enough to do that deed!" The loud peal of Miss Herbert's dressing-room bell resounding through the house broke up the conference between the maids, and Janet went away to answer it, muttering, angrily: "Lucy, I do wish we could change mistresses for awhile. I'm that tired with tramping up and down to wait on that ill-natered upstart that all my bones are sore." So Bonnibel's circumstances and prospects were discussed in high life up-stairs, and by servantdom down-stairs, while she herself, the most interested party, was ignorant of it all. How could she, whose torn heart was filled with one single aching memory, take note of all that went on about her?