How long Jane grieved over this discovery and these letters, I need not say, but grieve she did, until some that had known her slightly knew her not again; and those who had known her best became most deeply certain, that if this was suffered to continue, a light heart was for ever exchanged for a sad one, and the creature whose very presence had diffused happiness, was converted into one of those melancholy beings over whose mind an everlasting cloud seems to have settled; whose looks instantaneously demand our pity, we scarce know why, and whose very bodily existence appears to become spectral and unearthly, while yet they sit at our table, or muse statue-like with melancholy by our hearth. Then it was that the obstinate began to soften, the strict to relax, the determined to think that continued opposition to the ways of the heart is too cruel to be always maintained. Everybody loved poor Jane, and everybody grieved to see her grief. So at length they proceeded from the direct exertion of counter influences upon her, to the tacitly understood holding out of hope, and the sometimes expressed possibility that matters might yet be ultimately arranged to her satisfaction. Meanwhile, as the Squire's object in introducing his son to Mrs. Lupton had been fulfilled, Colin took the earliest opportunity, in company with Roger Calvert, to return to London, and throw himself with passionate sorrow before his mistress. But before we follow him thither, and record his fortunes, the reader will, perhaps, be pleased to hear something respecting certain other of the characters who have figured in this book, to whose interest, be it hoped, he does not feel altogether indifferent. CHAPTER X. _A corpse missing. The trial. The verdict. The effect of it. A fearful night scene at Nabbfield._