"If I had spoke ever so, I don't suppose it would have altered things, Mr. Richard. There was no proof; and, failing that, you wouldn't have liked to say anything at all to Miss Bessy. Any way they are man and wife now." "I hope--I _hope_ he did not write it!" said Richard, fervently. Mrs. Gass gave a sweep with her arm to all the china together, as she bent her earnest face nearer to Richard's. "Let's remember this much to our comfort, Mr. Richard: if it _was_ him, he never thought to harm a hair of your brother's head. He must have wrote it to damage Alexander. Oliver Rane has looked upon Alexander as his mortal enemy--as a man who did him a right down bad turn and spoilt his prospects--as a man upon whom it was a'most a duty to be revenged." "Do you think this?" cried Richard, rather at sea. "No; but I say he thinks it. He never meant worse nor better by the letter than to drive Alexander away from the place where, as Rane fancies, he only had a footing by treachery. That is, _if_ he wrote it. Sometimes I think he did, and sometimes I think he didn't." "What is to be done?" "Nothing. You can do nothing. You and me must just bury it between us, sir, for Miss Bessy's sake. It would be a nasty thing for her if a whisper of this should go abroad, let him be as innocent as the babe unborn. They are fond of one another, and it would just be a cruelty to have stopped the marriage with _this_. He is a well-intentioned man, and I don't see but what they'll be happy together. Let us hope that he has made his peace with the Lord, and that it won't be visited upon him." "Amen!" Was the mental response of Richard North. CHAPTER XIII. COMING HOME. Dashing up to Dallory Hall, just a week and a day after the wedding, came Mrs. North. Madam had learnt the news. Whilst she was reposing in all security in Paris, amidst a knot of friends who had chosen to be there at that season, Matilda North happened to take up a _Times_ newspaper of some two or three days old, and saw the account of the marriage: "Oliver Rane, M.D., of Dallory Ham to Bessy, daughter of John North, of Dallory Hall, and of Elizabeth, his first wife." Madam rose up, her face flaming, and clutched the journal: she verily believed Miss Matilda was playing a farce upon her. No: the announcement was there in plain black and white. Making her hasty arrangements to quit the French capital, she came thundering home: and arrived the very day that Dr. and Mrs. Rane returned. A letter had preceded her. A letter of denouncing wrath, that had made her husband shake in his shoes. Poor Mr. North looked tremblingly out for the arrival, caught a glimpse of the carriage and of madam's face, and slipped out by the back-door into the fields. Where he remained wandering about for hours. So madam found no one to receive her. Richard was at the works, Captain Bohun had been out all the afternoon.