And I was invited to Atworth! I should there have an opportunity of being always at the side of the woman I loved so madly, and perhaps be enabled to penetrate the veil of mystery with which she was surrounded. I was suspicious of the baronet's wife--suspicious because she had made her first call upon me under such curious circumstances. How did she know me? and for what reason had she sought my acquaintance? She had endeavoured to flirt with me. Faugh! Her beauty, her smartness, and her clever woman's wiles might have turned the heads of the majority of men. But I loved Beryl, and she was mine--mine! Reader, I have taken you entirely into my confidence, and I am laying bare to you my secret. Need I tell you how maddening the enigma had now become, how near I always seemed to some solution and yet how far off the truth? Place yourself in my position for a single moment--adoring the woman who, although she was actually my wife, was yet ignorant of the fact; and I dare not tell her the truth lest she might hold me in suspicion as one of those who had conspired against her. So far from the problem being, solved, each day rendered it more intricate and more inscrutable, until the continual weight upon my mind drove me to despair. Hence my anxiety for the days to pass in order that I might journey down to Atworth. At last, on a close, overcast afternoon in the middle of September, when the hot sun seemed unable to penetrate the heavy veil of London smoke and the air was suffocating, I left Paddington, and, in due course, found myself upon the platform of the wayside station of Corsham, close to the entrance to the Box tunnel, where Sir Henry and his wife awaited me. The former was a tall, smart-looking, elderly man with grey hair and a well-trimmed grey beard, who, on our introduction, greeted me most cordially, expressing a hope that I should have "a good time" with them. I liked him at once; his face was open and honest, and his hand-grip was sincere. We mounted the smart dogcart, and, leaving my baggage to the servant, drove out into the high-road which ran over the hills, looming purple in the golden sunset haze, to Trowbridge. Five miles through that picturesque, romantic district--one of the fairest in England--skirting the Monk's Park, crossing the old Roman Road between Bath and London, and having ascended the ridge of the steep known as Corsham Side, we descended again through the little old-fashioned village of Atworth by a road which brought us, at last, to the lodge of the Hall. Then, entering the drive, we drove up to the fine old Tudor mansion, low and comfortable looking, with its long _facade_ almost overgrown with ivy. One of "the stately homes of England," it stood commanding a view of the whole range of the Wiltshire hills, the trees and park now bathed in the violets of the afterglow.