"Oh! Of course he is changed. He looks ever so much older and not nearly so nice looking, and he is as grave as an undertaker, except when I make him laugh--but heigh, ho! It is no wonder, with such a burden as his grandmother placed upon him. He would soon look himself again if he had this magnificent castle, and the one whom he loves for his wife." "You would be quite willing to marry _that_ person, would you, Lady Juliana?" "Why do you ask? Is it only to tease me? You know that I never left off loving him." "And yet how ignoble was that love!" said Margaret, bitterly; "how shallow, that could so mistake its object! Oh, my lady, I might have remembered your skin-deep nature when I asked you to come here and help me." "What now," cried my lady, fearing she had said too much and becoming alarmed. "Why should you talk that way to me? I can't help my love for St. Udo Brand." "Try to help it, then, for the man is a villain," was the cold rejoinder. "A villain!" ejaculated the other, thoroughly startled. "What can you mean? That's a strange way to speak of the gentleman you are going to marry. I--I think it is dishonorable!" "I am not going to marry _him_," returned Margaret; "oh, no, my lady--no, no!" She burst into a wild laugh which became so violent that Lady Juliana got up uneasily and moved away. "I must say that I am altogether mystified as to your affairs then," she remarked, sullenly; "I thought that I was summoned here to be your confidential adviser, or bride-maid, or some such thing. It seems I have come here to be laughed at." "Pardon me," said Margaret, putting a violent strain upon herself. "I am not laughing for amusement; indeed, I am scarcely in a gay mood. I summoned you here, Lady Julie, because I hoped, through you, to settle a certain question; but I now see that it is not within your power." Lady Juliana looked at her with intense curiosity. She had a vague idea that she had allowed something to slip through her fingers by her carelessness, and she determined, vindictively, that it should not be St. Udo Brand. "I'll have him fast as ever bound to my sleeve," she inwardly vowed: "and I am very much mistaken if this eccentric creature does not give us Seven-Oak Waaste." My lady drove away next morning from gloomy Castle Brand, had a coquettish half-hour of farewell at the station with Colonel Brand, who was lounging there casually, did as much mischief as she could to Margaret's cause, and went back to London, her head full of new ambitions. And that was the end of Margaret's experiment. It was some time after Lady Julie's useless visit, and Margaret was walking on the Waaste with Mrs. Chetwode. She had discontinued her solitary walks since the evening by the mere, and invariably begged the housekeeper's company, or had a man-servant to keep her in sight whenever she took the air.