"Hech!" answered their eccentric countryman, "'tis very plain ye ken not women--nor, for that matter, the young sparks of London! This is how it went. One certain fair lady--from whom I bring you a wee bit message--wrung her hands and wept, saying, 'Betrayed, betrayed again! The veellain! the veellain!' whereby I think she meant not you; the other fair lady, who is maybe an hour or so older, stormed and scolded and screeched about unutterable scoundrels, yet bade the other cease weeping and seek her house, to which she was very welcome; while the two young men uttered words more befitting their braw though unholy dishevelled apparel, and spake of him," and here the nodding head was wagged over to Fordingbridge's house again, "as though he were Lucifer incarnate--though that was not the name, so to speak as it were. And for the old man with the fierce eye, hech! mon, his language was unbefitting a Christian." "And the message the lady scrawled. What is it?" "'Tis here," the other replied. "You must just excuse the hasty writing--" but ere he could finish his remark Bertie had taken a piece of paper from his hand which he brought out from under his cloak, and, striding to where an oil lamp glimmered over a doorway, read what it contained. The few lines ran as follows: "We are once more betrayed. He has, I know, done this. I leave his house and him for ever from to-night. I pray God you may yet escape. If you ever loved me, fly--fly at once. Lose no moment.--Katherine." CHAPTER X. HOW MY LORD RETURNED HOME. It was on a bright afternoon, a week after the events which have been described, that Lord Fordingbridge's travelling carriage drew up in front of his house, and my lord descended in an extremely bad humour. There was, perhaps, more than one reason why he was not in the most amiable of tempers, the principal one being that the news which he had hoped to receive ere he again made his entrance into London had not come to hand.