The sun had long risen, when Martha was startled from the deep sleep into which the last night’s watching had thrown her, by a loud knocking at the cottage door. A splendid carriage had driven up the narrow avenue, and a liveried footman enquired if a young lady, under the protection of Major Derode, lived there. Martha stated the manner in which Mrs. Anson had, on the previous night, left the cottage. “My mistress, the Hon. Mrs. Torrance,” said the footman, “seems so anxious to learn the particulars respecting this young woman, that I wish you would ride up to town with us, and give her whatever information you can.” Martha willingly complied, and the carriage had scarce accomplished seven miles of the journey, when the girl observed a female toiling slowly and painfully along the road. She called to the coachman to stop, for she recognised her mistress in the wanderer. They partly forced the passive creature into the carriage, and as she expressed no wish to be driven to any particular place, in less than an hour she was reposing her wearied limbs on an ottoman in the house of the Hon. Mrs. Torrance. All the servants who knew of the arrival of the strange lady, were forbidden by the Hon. Mrs. Torrance to reveal the circumstances, and Martha was instructed to tell the major she had seen nothing of Mrs. Anson after her departure from the cottage;—Derode, therefore, had no doubt that his victim had left the kingdom. Still he observed that the widow had altered her demeanor toward him. She received him coldly, and with something like mystery. He urged the hastening of the nuptials. She baffled him by trifling excuses, for she resolved the moment Mrs. Anson had recovered from the fever which seized her on the day she entered that hospitable abode, to confront her with the treacherous man. * * * * * “So, in three weeks more, my dear Isabel, I must give more form to my speech, for I shall address in you the bride of Lord Edward Fortescue; your elevation to the peerage will not change your heart toward us, Isabel?” said a sprightly girl to the daughter of Major Derode. “For shame, to think of such a thing,” answered the affianced, “but, as poor Juliet says in the play, ‘I have no joy in this contract to-night.’ I have, my dear Emily, for a day or two past, felt a strange reluctance to marry his lordship. His title dazzled me at first, but I fear its novelty will wear off, and then where shall I seek for happiness?”