Daisy's heart turned sick and faint within her. Not at Lydia's supreme sarcasm, but at the horrible conviction that there must be something in the tale. She remembered the past evening at the dinner-table--and the recollection came rushing into her mind like a barbed arrow--when Sir Arthur Beauchamp and others were questioning Frank about this very girl and her beauty, and she--Daisy--had been struck with the emotion he betrayed; with his evidently shrinking manner, with the changing hue of his face. Did he in truth love this girl, Rosaline Bell?--and was she so very beautiful? "How did you hear this, Lydia?" asked Daisy, in tones from which all spirit was quenched. "I heard it from Tabitha. She knows about it. You can ask her yourself." And Daisy did ask. As it chanced, the maid at that moment entered the room with some beef-tea for Lydia; and Daisy, suppressing her pride and her reticence, condescended to question her. Tabitha answered freely and readily, as if there were nothing in the subject to conceal, and with a palpable belief in its truth that told terribly upon Daisy. In fact, the woman herself implicitly believed it. Mr. Blase Pellet had once favoured her with his version of the story, and Tabitha never supposed that that version existed in Mr. Pellet's own imagination, and in that alone. "I--don't think it can be _true_, Tabitha," faltered poor Daisy, her heart beating wildly. "She was not a lady." "It's true enough, Miss Margaret. Blase Pellet wanted her himself, but she'd have nothing to say to him--or to any one else except Mr. Raynor. Pellet is related to the Bells, and knew all about it. What he said to me was this: 'Raynor is after her for ever, day and night, and she worships the ground he treads on!' Those were his very words, Miss Margaret." Margaret, turning hot and cold, and red and white, made her escape from the room, and took refuge in her own. In that first moment of awakening, she felt as though her heart must break with its bitter pain. Jealousy, baleful jealousy, had taken possession of her: and no other passion in this life can prey upon our bosoms so relentlessly, or touch them with so keen a sting. CHAPTER XIV. IN THE CHURCHYARD. Trennach churchyard was lonely at all times, but it looked particularly so in the twilight of a dull evening. The trees took fantastic shapes; the headstones stood out like spectres; the grave-mounds reminded you unpleasantly that you yourself must sometime lie beneath them. Especially grey were the skies this evening; for, though it was summer weather, the day had been gloomy: and Mr. Blase Pellet, sitting in the middle of the churchyard on the stump of an old tree, looked grey and gloomy as the weather and the graves.