Lady Emily, with her pale, sallow face and expressionless eyes, would have looked better there, I said, or even Miss Rossiter herself, who when dressed and feeling well was still very attractive, and when I went down stairs and found her sitting on the veranda, in her white cambric dress, with the scarlet shawl she wore so much wrapped around her, her glossy black hair becomingly arranged, with a single white flower among the heavy braids, I thought the colonel would have done far better to have taken her than the bride he had chosen. We had a very quiet, stupid, six-hand game of croquet, and the dinner was quieter, stupider still, for all the ladies seemed preoccupied and disinclined to talk. Not a word was said of the marriage by any one until I was leaving, when Emma came up to me, and whispered softly: “They are in New York. We had a telegram this afternoon.” She did not say who _they_ were, but I pressed her hand in token of my sympathy, for I knew that _they_ had reference to the new mistress of Schuyler Hill. CHAPTER XXIII. MRS. ROGERS AND GERTIE AT HAMPSTEAD. The voyage, which, owing to adverse winds, had been unusually long, was over, and the names of “Col. Schuyler, lady and maid” were registered at the hotel, where they were to stop for a week or more before going to their home in Hampstead. Macpherson and Godfrey were there also, the latter showing the city to his friend, who cared only for the studios and galleries of paintings. After her husband’s reproof Edith had made no attempt to see Gertie Westbrooke, but she had inquired for her every day and sent many delicacies to her, and once, in the distance, she had seen her shawl wrapped around a little figure which was leaning over the railing, with masses of bright hair falling beneath the scarlet hood, and to herself she said: “That must be Gertie Westbrooke.” But further than that she knew nothing of the child, until she heard Godfrey talking to his father about the cottage Mrs. Rogers was to have. “Yes, certainly, I’ll ask Mrs. Schuyler,” Colonel Schuyler said to some suggestion of Godfrey, and then added, with a laugh: “It seems, Edith, that this child in whom you were so much interested is to be my tenant, or rather Godfrey’s, as the cottage is his. He, too, has taken a most unaccountable fancy to the girl, and as I have ordered your suite of rooms to be wholly refurnished, Godfrey has suggested that we let this Mrs. Rogers have as much of the old furniture as will be suitable for that cottage. She has everything to buy, of course, and not much means, I dare say.”