"Whatever you tell me, Henry, I will do; and it will be much better that I should go as your wife. I am yours altogether; and, if occasionally, since I promised to go with you, feelings of doubt--perhaps, I might almost say, of self-reproach--have come across me, for so joyfully consenting to quit the protector of my childhood, those feelings have all passed. His conduct towards you, his betrayal of you, would remove all scruples. All was explained to me last night, and I never heard of darker baseness. To me, too, he has behaved very ill, and to my parents worse. What I looked upon as kindness and protection have been, in reality, policy and imprisonment; and I have every right to leave him who has no right to detain me. Hark!" Her exclamation was caused by a sound at the lock of the door. The next instant the door was opened, and Mrs. Culpepper appeared. She showed no surprise, but much agitation; and, without closing the door, she beckoned to Smeaton, saying, in a low tone-- "This is madness, Henry. Indeed, my lord, you must fly this instant. You can return at night; but do not come out of the priest's chamber till I knock for you. Come, my lord, come. Sir John is already moving in his room." With one more embrace, Smeaton and Emmeline parted; and, holding up her finger to enjoin silence, Mrs. Culpepper led the young nobleman back to the priest's chamber, closing the aperture behind him. She then returned, at once, to Emmeline's apartment, and, having shut the door, said-- "Run into your bed-room, dear lady, and answer me aloud through the door." Emmeline did as she was asked, and then the old housekeeper put several questions as to her night's rest, and several matters of ordinary interest, receiving somewhat wondering replies. But the old woman was politic; and she was still speaking, when Sir John Newark knocked at the door, saying-- "Who are you talking to, Emmeline?" Mrs. Culpepper instantly opened the door, and replied-- "It is I, Sir John." Her voice was as calm and quiet, her manner as unruffled and staid as usual; but Sir John Newark beckoned her out of the room, and then said, in a low tone-- "I heard a noise as if the entrance to the priest's room had been rolled backward and forward." "Yes, Sir John," replied the old lady. "By your own orders, I go frequently to see that it opens and shuts easily. I always go early or late; but I thought I heard the young lady moving in her room, and I went to see what could have got her up so early." Sir John Newark did not speak for a minute, but looked at the housekeeper quietly from under his eyebrows, and she saw at once that he doubted her. She was too much accustomed, however, to meet and frustrate his suspicions to be at all alarmed, though she felt some degree of apprehension, from various causes, when he said, at length-- "I have not been in that priest's room for two or three years. I should like to look round it again."