"You leave too late," cried my lady, tauntingly. "You have caught your fish and can afford to leave the fish-pond now, I suppose. Really, I think it no bad thing for a sea-captain's daughter to become the Duchess of Piermont and the mistress of Seven-Oak Waaste." "Lady Julie! Lady Julie!" cried Margaret, turning away with an unutterable heart-pang, "I have loved you well, and should not be treated thus. I desire to be neither the wife of the Duke of Piermont nor the mistress of Seven-Oak Waaste." She opened her wardrobe and began, with trembling hands, to array herself in her bonnet and cloak, and to arrange a few things in her small travelling-bag, tears dripping slowly all the time. "What are you going to do?" sneered my lady, watching her movements with incredulity. "To go away--to find another home, Lady Julie." "What! so suddenly? Without bidding his grace farewell? How cruel of Miss Walsingham to treat her enamored admirer so." Margaret took no further notice of my lady, but hastened her movements toward departure. "Had you not better wait till the morning?" said Lady Juliana, fretfully, "and see my father before you go? Or are you anxious to go in this absurd manner so that you may blason to the whole world how badly I have treated you?" "This interview is safe with me," said Margaret, turning on the stairs; "and you may smooth over my departure as you please." "And where is Bignetta to send your boxes, and where is my father to send your salary?" "To the Lambeth express office until I send for them. Farewell, my lady." With a sigh in which there was no bitter resentment, though her injuries had not been slight, poor Margaret Walsingham flitted down the silent staircase, and, heedless of the servants, who were putting out the lights, and who stared curiously at her, she went out into the park. The night wind moaned drearily among the stately trees; a Brazilian bird in my lord's aviary uttered a piercing shriek of warning, as a hoarse baying of a hound broke from the kennels. Down by the gray stone fountain, where a laughing naiad flung jets of water from her golden comb, Margaret turned back and looked upon my lady's lighted windows as Eve looked upon guarded Paradise. How she had filled her whole heart and fed her boundless love with this girl. Was it Heaven's will that all whom she loved should sting her thus? She was a waif sent wandering through a world which shrank from her as if Cain's mark burned upon her brow? So Margaret Walsingham turned again and drifted down into the world which had never a beating pulse for her, and went to find--she knew not where--a place to work in, a sphere to fill, a duty to perform. She was friendless, and heart-hungered, and despitefully wronged; but God was her keeper. * * * * * Poor Margaret had been travelling about from place to place for the past fortnight, in the vain hope of finding a situation.