to carry away young girls, and send a father, a husband, or a troublesome lover to the shades. It is said that they are responsible for many a death, and that if one should visit the 'Folly' which Mowbray possesses near Chelsea, if one were to sound the walls which are riddled with secret passages, if one should search the cellars which the Thames is made to inundate at certain hours, perhaps one would find the explanation of the desperate cries which have been heard by night in the silence of the country; perhaps one would discover human remains, skeletons cramped into attitudes which would tell the tale of the ferocity which had abused their last agony!" In speaking thus this strange woman was completely transformed. Lately so flippant and sceptical, as were the women of her time, who scarcely ever spoke without an accompanying smile, she had become more tragic than Siddons. She spoke in a low, swift, sibilant tone close into Esther's face, filling her with fear, magnetizing her with her dark glance, and crushing her hands in her grip of iron almost without knowing it. Esther seemed quite terrified. Thereupon Bella resumed, in a soft, imploring voice,-- "And such is the man who pretends to love you, who perhaps makes your heart beat at this moment. But I will save you. Your embarrassment, your emotion, have told me their story. Have done with it all, and cast yourself upon the bosom of a true friend. Tell me all." These final words, which ought to have assured Lady Vereker's victory, were just the ones which compromised her. Her eyes betrayed an all too anxious, too passionate desire to learn the truth! Like lightning a suspicion crossed Esther's mind: Does Lady Vereker love Lord Mowbray? "You appear to know him exceedingly well," she said. The words were uttered so unexpectedly that for a moment Bella was thrown off her guard. Her cleverly tinted face concealed her internal emotions, but a twitching of the lips, a rapid fluttering of the eyelids, did not escape Esther, who had become all at once dangerously keen, as is the case of every woman who suspects and wishes to know. "She is lying!" thought Esther, though aloud she said:-- "Lord Mowbray was present at my _début_. As so many other gentlemen did, he sent me flowers, verses, and jewels; and--and that is all." "She's lying!" thought Lady Vereker in her turn. And both were correct. Lady Vereker forbore to tell Esther of the hold she had once had upon Lord Mowbray--a hold which she had not yet despaired of regaining, while Esther would not admit to Lady Vereker that she had rashly replied to one of Lord Mowbray's notes and already began to find it difficult to defend herself against his assiduities.