"Is Miss Bedford so mortally offended?" said a voice close at their side. "I have no doubt we can manage to obtain her forgiveness for you, Mr Vining. But not to-night, as there will not be time.--Nelly wants you in the schoolroom, Miss Bedford, and then, as it is late, perhaps you had better not return to the drawing-room this evening." Ella Bedford started, as, with flashing, angry eyes, Laura Bray stepped forward from behind the thick foliage of an orange-tree, and then, without a word--for she could not have spoken, so bitter, so cruel were the tones, and so deep the sting--Ella glided from the conservatory, leaving Laura face to face with Charley. "I am sorry to have interrupted so pleasant a tete-a-tete!" exclaimed Laura tauntingly. There was no answer. Charley merely leaned against the open window, and gazed out upon the starry night; for he could not trust himself to speak, since every humiliating word addressed to his late companion had seemed to cut into his own heart; and had he spoken, it would have been with some hot angry words, of which he would afterwards have repented. "Had I known that Mr Charles Vining was so pleasantly engaged, I would not have come," said Laura again bitterly, and with reproach in every tone of her voice. Again angry words were on Charley's lips; but for the sake of her who had left him he crushed them down, as he stood listening to the impatient foot of the angry girl beating the tiled floor, and seemed to feel her eyes burning him as they literally flashed with suppressed rage. "Perhaps now that Mr Vining is disengaged he will lead me back to the drawing-room, as it might be painful to his feelings for people afterwards to make remarks upon our absence." Charley started at this, and made a movement as if to offer his arm; but the remembrance of the cruel insult to the dependent yet rankled in his breast, and he seemed to shrink from the angry woman as from something that he loathed.