“It is not my fault, Alick,” was the reply; “but Mr. Lukin is coming to town, and I must be on the spot to receive him; you will take care of Heather, Alick,” he added, in a lower and a different tone, drawing his brother aside; “you will promise me to take care of her?” “Take care of Heather!” answered Alick, “I like that; as though I should not take care of her. Do you think I forget, Arthur—do you imagine I could possibly forget, the years during which she was our mother—the best mother ever any boys and girls found?” “Thank you, I shall be easier now,” Arthur answered; and then he joined the others and kept near his wife till it was time for the little party to enter the compartment, which they quite filled. To the last, Squire Dudley never took his eyes off his wife’s face; and, when the moment of final parting came, he kissed her two or three times over, saying “God bless you, Heather! think of me sometimes.” When the train moved off, he stood on the platform, looking after the carriage which contained his wife; and as the speed increased, Heather saw a look come over his countenance which filled her with so terrible an alarm, that she cried out in a moment, “Alick, I must go back to Arthur! there is something the matter! I ought never to have come!” All in vain, they tried to combat her determination; at the first station where the express stopped, Heather alighted, resolved to return to town. She would not hear of Alick travelling with her. “No,” she said; “if he be in any trouble, I shall be better to remain alone with him; if not, I will go down to you by the first train on Monday morning. I promise, Alick, faithfully! Do not try to prevent my going home,” she pleaded; “remember, once before I wanted to turn back, and Arthur would not let me!” Which last argument, proving unanswerable, with heavy hearts they allowed her to have her own way, and she went into the waiting-room, where she stopped for an hour, until the up express appeared in sight, when she took her seat, together with some other passengers, and was soon tearing back to London, under the glare of the afternoon sun. At the terminus she took a cab for Norton Folgate, from whence she walked on to Silk Street. She had no need to ring the bell, for one of the men coming out at the moment, afforded her entrance, without attracting, in any way, attention to her return. “I fear I have done a very foolish thing,” she thought, as she stepped inside the gateway, and any one else might have thought the same, for Arthur had complained of neither ache nor pain; he had been in good spirits all the morning; he had faithfully promised to come down through the week; and, but for that expression of hopeless, helpless, blank despair in his face as the train swept out of the station, Heather would have gone away happy, and Arthur’s fate proved different. As it was, he had traversed the road back from Waterloo a miserable and a wretched man.