Rossie could deny herself everything, but she was never indifferent to the comfort of others, and though she could not help feeling that this woman, who called herself Mrs. J. E. Forrest, would in some way work her harm, she could understand just how cold and cheerless the house must seem to her on that rainy day; and she ordered Axie to build fires in both the rooms below, as well as in the chamber where Everard occasionally spent a night, and which was the only guest-room she kept in order. There was also a consultation on the important subject of dinner, and then Rossie was left alone for a few moments to puzzle her brain as to who this woman could be, and wonder why her heart should feel so like lead, and her pulse beat so rapidly. She did not have long to wait for a solution of the mystery before Mrs. Markham came in, showing at once that she was agitated and distressed. “What is it, Mrs. Markham? Is she any relation to Mr. Everard?” Rossie asked eagerly. It would be wrong to keep her in suspense a moment longer than was necessary, and going up to her, Mrs. Markham replied: “She says she is Everard’s wife; and I have seen the certificate. They were married more than four years ago, before his mother died, and she,—oh, Rossie, my child, my child, don’t give way like that; it may—it must be false,” she added, in alarm, as she saw the death-like pallor which spread over Rossie’s face, and the look of bitter pain and horror which leaped into her eyes, while the quivering lips whispered: “Everard’s wife? No, no, no!” “Don’t, Rossie,—don’t!” Mrs. Markham said again, as she passed her arm around the girl, whose head drooped upon her shoulder, in a hopeless kind of way, and who said: “You saw the certificate? What was the name? Was it——” “Fleming,—Josephine Fleming, of Holburton,” Mrs. Markham replied, and with a shiver Rossie drew herself away from Mrs. Markham’s arms, and turning her face to the wall, said: “Yes, I know. I understand it all. She is his wife. She is Joe Fleming.” After that she neither spoke nor moved, and when Mrs. Markham, alarmed at her silence, bent down to look at her, she found that she had fainted. The shock had proved too great for Rossie, whose mind, at the mention of Josephine Fleming, had with lightning rapidity gathered all the tangled threads of the past, and comprehended what had been so mysterious at times in Everard’s behavior. He _was married_,—hastily, no doubt, but still married; and Joe Fleming was his wife, and he had never told her, but suffered her to believe that he loved her, just as she knew now that she loved him. It was a bitter humiliation, and for an instant there gathered round her so thick a horror and blackness that she fancied herself dying; but it was only a faint, and she lay so white and rigid that Mrs. Markham summoned Aunt Axie from the dining-room, where she was making preparations for kindling a fire in the grate.