Madam dexterously twitched the letter away, carried it to the window and read it from end to end. Matilda saw her face turn ghastly through its paint, as if with fright. "Serves her right," thought the young lady. "Mamma, what is amiss?" Madam crumpled the letter into a ball in her agitated hand: but no answer came from her white lips. Turning abruptly up the stairs, she locked herself into her chamber. "She is in an agony of fright--whatever the cause may be," quoth Miss Matilda, in soliloquy. Ere the day had closed, the household was called upon to witness madam's sudden departure by train. She went alone: and gave not the slightest clue as to where she might be going, or when she would return. Matilda North had aptly worded the paroxysm: "an agony of fright." She might have added: a tempest of fury; for madam was in both. For that letter had given her the news of Arthur Bohun's present locality--and that he was by the side of Ellen Adair. What had become of Dick? the letter asked. He must hasten and come, or he would be too late. Madam did not understand at all. There followed a mysterious intimation to Dick; to Dick, whom Arthur so trusted and who was true as steel; it was more obscure even than the rest; but it seemed to hint at--yes, to hint at--marriage. Marriage? Madam felt her flesh creeping. "A son of mine marry _her!_" she breathed. "Heaven help me to avert the danger." About the last woman, one would think, who ought to call for help from Heaven. CHAPTER XII. AN INTERRUPTION. The tide came rippling up on the sea-shore with a monotonous, soothing murmur. There were no waves to-day; the air was densely still; but in the western sky little black clouds were rising, no bigger yet than a man's hand; and as the weatherwise old fishermen glanced to the spot, they foretold a storm. Two people, pacing the beach side by side, regarded neither the sea nor the threatened storm. Need you be told that they were Arthur Bohun and Ellen Adair. What were the winds and the waves to them in their happiness? Amidst the misery that was soon to set in for both, the recollection of this short time spent at Eastsea, these few weeks since their love had been declared, and their marriage was approaching, would seem as an impossible dream.