None had been dastard enough to say a syllable against her; neither had she, in the warmest faith of love, forgotten truth; but her own dejection drove her, not to revile the world (as sour natures do consistently), but to shrink from sight, and fancy that the world was reviling her. While she fluttered thus and hovered over the cold verge of death, with her sore distempered spirit, scarcely sure of anything, tidings came of another trouble, and turned the scale against her. Albert de Wichehalse, her trusty cousin and true lover, had fallen in a duel with that recreant and miscreant Lord Auberley. The strictest orders were given that this should be kept for the present from Frida's ears; but what is the use of the strictest orders when a widowed mother raves? Albert's mother vowed that “the shameless jilt” should hear it out, and slipped her guards and waylaid Frida on the morn of Candlemas, and overbore her with such words as may be well imagined. “Auntie!” said the poor thing at last, shaking her beautiful curls, and laying one little hand to her empty heart, “don't be cross with me to-day. I am going home to be married, auntie. It is the day my Aubyn always fixed, and he never fails me.” “Little fool!” her aunt exclaimed, as Frida kissed her hand and courtesied, and ran round the corner; “one comfort is to know that she is as mad as a mole, at any rate.” CHAPTER IX. Frida, knowing--perhaps more deeply than that violent woman thought--the mischief thus put into her, stole back to her bedroom, and, without a word to anyone, tired her hair in the Grecian snood which her lover used to admire so, and arrayed her soft and delicate form in all the bridal finery. Perhaps, that day, no bride in England--certainly none of her youth and beauty--treated her favourite looking-glass with such contempt and ingratitude. She did not care to examine herself, through some reluctant sense of havoc, and a bitter fear that someone might be disappointed in her. Then at the last, when all was ready, she snatched up her lover's portrait (which for days had been cast aside and cold), and, laying it on her bosom, took a snatch of a glance at her lovely self. After some wonder she fetched a deep sigh--not from clearly thinking anything, but as an act of nature--and said, “Good-by!” forever, with a little smile of irony, to her looking-glass, and all the many pretty things that knew her. It was her bad luck, as some people thought thereafter--or her good luck, as herself beheld it--to get down the stairs and out of the house without anyone being the wiser. For the widow De Wichehalse, Albert's mother, had not been content with sealing the doom of this poor maiden, but in that highly excited state, which was to be expected, hurried into the house, to beard the worthy baron in his den. There she found him; and, although he said and did all sympathy, the strain of parental feelings could not yield without “hysterics.”