But Julia, as if goaded by some fear that made patient waiting an impossibility, put her aside, and, throwing herself on her knees beside the silent Florence, seized her cold hands in her own feverish palms. “Speak at once, Miss Heriton! Let us know the worst! You have been out--you have heard tidings which concern us--me--as well as yourself, else you would not be here!” “I am more selfish than you imagine,” was the reply. “I came to Susan, because I am in great distress. I hope--ah, I hope it is a trouble which will not affect you.” But there was a doubt and a question in Florence’s unsteady accents, and Julia felt it. “Tell me where you have been and what you have heard,” she said, so imperiously that Susan, with a look of grave reproof, touched her shoulder. “I have been to the Albany--to Lieutenant Mason’s chambers.” “Ha! To tell him your doubts of his honor and honesty,” cried Julia, rising to her feet and looking proudly down upon Florence’s sad face, “to hear him indignantly refute your suspicions, and come away ashamed of your injustice. That is why you are here, is it not? You come to us to confess how cruelly you have wronged him.” Were there no gathering doubts of his truth in her own highly strained voice? No inward conviction that she was about to hear some appalling truth making itself visible in her dilated eye, her quivering lips? Frightened at the insight she suddenly gained into this troubled heart, and at the misery she must inflict here as well as at home, Florence essayed to rise, but those hot hands held her down. “She will not answer!” cried Julia wildly. “She is torturing me, and she knows it! Miss Heriton, what has happened? Tell me!” she added fiercely. “You shall tell me! Is he dead?” Susan again interposed. “Julia, you are terrifying Miss Heriton! Are you mad?” But the kneeling girl only repeated the question: “Is he dead?” and the depth of terror in her dark orbs constrained Florence to reply: “If you mean Lieutenant Mason, he lives; but he has fled the country to avoid his creditors.” “Who fabricated this?” demanded her startled hearer. “It was told to me in the presence of his manservant, who did not contradict it.” Without speaking another word, Julia Denham passed into her bedroom, and in little more than a minute emerged in her walking attire. Her face was crimson, her lips tightly compressed, and from the wild expression of her eyes Florence shrank with terror. Susan threw herself before her cousin. “Dear Julia, where are you going?” Receiving no reply, she cried more urgently than before: “Julia, what are you about to do? What is this Lieutenant Mason to you?” “My husband!” she answered, as she repulsed her gentle cousin, and swept proudly from the room. CHAPTER VII. DESERTED.