“Oh, mamma!” she said, “I fear they cannot know my real position here! They cannot know that I am a forsaken wife! Why, yesterday old Lady Nutt patted my head and said: “‘I can feel for you, my dear. I had a niece in the H. E. I. C.’s service, and she had to come home with her young children and leave them here with their grandmother while she went back to him. Do you intend to stay here with your child, or leave it here with your parents and join the captain in India?’ “Yes, mamma, in all innocence the dear old lady asked me that question! And my cheeks burned like fire as I answered her the truth and said, ‘I intend to stay here with my baby, my lady.’ She said, ‘That is right,’ and kissed me and went away before you came in.” “She is a good old soul,” was Hetty’s only comment. “Yes, mamma, but you have missed the point I wished to make. It is so embarrassing to have people call on me and make remarks that I must either correct by telling them plainly how I am situated, or else that I must pass unnoticed, as if they were true, and so, as it were, silently indorse a false view.” “My dear, I don’t see how you can help yourself. You cannot blow a trumpet before you proclaiming to all and sundry the wickedness of your husband in deserting you, his lawful wife, and marrying, feloniously, another woman! You cannot even tell that to your visitors in confidence. It would not become you to do so.” “No, mamma, dear, I cannot; but some day some visitor will innocently ask me some straightforward, plain question, which will require an answer, involving a confession of my real position. Oh! what shall I do in such a case?” “My dear child, wait until that day comes and that question is asked. That will be time enough to worry about it. Jennie! the secret of peace is the practice of faith. Do your present duty, bear your present burden, enjoy your present blessings, and leave the future to the Lord. You have nothing to do with it. For you it has not even an existence,” said Hetty. Early in December news came in a letter from Mr. Randolph Hay, in Paris, to his bailiff, Mr. John Prowt, announcing the return of the squire, with his wife and a party of friends, to spend the Christmas holidays at the Hall. The house was to be made ready for them by the fifteenth of the month. Again all the estate, all the village and all the surrounding country were agog with anticipations of the free festivities that should glorify the triumphal entry of the new squire upon his paternal estate. Every one who came to call at the rectory talked of nothing but the expected event. On the next Sunday morning the Rev. Mr. Campbell preached an awful warning from the text: “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” And in the afternoon he preached a similar jeremiad from another text: “I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree.