A yearning impatience grew upon her for his return as she sat and thought thus. What hour was it? Surely he was at home sometimes earlier than this! As she turned her head to look at the timepiece on the marble console, Hilson came in, a note on his small silver salver. "One of the clerks brought it up from Leadenhall Street, my lady," he remarked, as he held it out to her. "He said there was no answer." It was not her husband's writing, and Lady Adela opened it with trembling fingers. Had some now and dreadful phase turned up in this unhappy business? The fear, that it had, flashed through her. "DEAR MADAM, "Mr. Grubb has been sent for to his mother, who is dangerously ill. He requested me to drop you a line to say he should probably remain at Blackheath for the night. I therefore do so, and despatch it to you by a clerk. "Your obedient servant, "JAMES HOWARD." "So I can't do it," she cried, thinking of all she had been planning out, something like resentment making itself heard in her disappointed heart. "What a wretched evening it will be!" Wretched enough. She did not venture to go to Chenevix House whilst lying under its wrathful displeasure; she had not the face to show herself elsewhere in this uncertainty and trouble. "I wish," she burst forth, with a petulant tap of her black satin slipper on the carpet, "I wish that tiresome Mrs. Lynn would get well! Or else die, and have done with it." The Lady Adela was not altogether in an entirely penitential frame of mind yet. CHAPTER XXV. SIR TURTLE KITE. What a delightful world this might be if all our fond plans and hopes could only be fulfilled! if no adverse influence crept in to frustrate them! Never a doubt had crossed the mind of those concerned for the welfare of Charles Cleveland, that he would be set at liberty on Tuesday, the day following the one above spoken of. It was not to be. Charles was brought up, as previously, for private examination before Alderman Sir Turtle Kite. No evidence was offered; on the contrary, a legal gentleman, one Mr. Primerly, the noted solicitor for the house of Grubb and Howard, intimated that there was none to offer--the charge had been a mistake altogether.