"You mean the man that wounded you? No, several were taken up on suspicion, but we were unable to prove anything against them, and the watcher, the poor man who was so frightfully bruised and otherwise ill-treated, swore, that none of them resembled his or your assailant." "I could have sworn to the man, too, I think." "You were abroad, and so I did not press the matter, and in time the affair blew over altogether." The conversation ended, and was perhaps forgotten by all save Robert Vavasour, and he could not forget it, but snatched his hat and strolled out hastily into the Park. What had made his wife's face flush so deeply? Had it anything to do with Charles, whom Frances was so constantly throwing at his teeth? He began to hate the very name, and was daily growing more madly suspicious of his wife, and yet had his thoughts framed themselves into words he would have shrunk from the bare idea of suspecting his idol. That she had not loved him with all her heart when he married her he knew: she had told him so; and how easy he had thought the task of winning the heart she had assured him none other had ever asked to have an interest in; but then had she loved none other? perhaps this very man of whom for one half hour he remembered being jealous long ago. When she told him the first, why if it was so, had she not told him the second? Why give him only half her confidence? Perhaps she loved him still? Perhaps the remembrance of him had called the guilty blush to her cheek? "Ah! if it is so!" he cried with angry vehemence, "he shall die. I will be revenged!" "Vengeance! who talks of vengeance?" said a voice near, and, looking up, he saw Goody Grey leaning on her staff. Involuntarily he tendered her some halfpence. "I want them not," she said. "It does not do for the blind to lead the blind." "What mean you, woman? I am in no mood to be trifled with." "Don't I know that?" she replied; "don't I know the bitterness of the heart? Do you think I have lived all these years and don't know where misery lies?" "Where does it lie?" he asked. "In your heart. Where it wouldn't have been if you hadn't been there;" and she pointed in the direction of the Hall. "'Tis a gay meeting, and may be as sad a parting." "Why so?" asked he again. "Do the hawk and dove agree together in the same nest?" "The dove would stand but a poor chance," said Robert. "True." She turned upon her heel and went into the cottage, and seating herself in a low chair, began rocking it backwards and forwards, singing, in a kind of low, monotonous chant, "When the leaves from the trees begin to fall Then the curse hangs darkly over the Hall." "That must be now, then," said Robert, who had followed her in, "for the leaves are falling thick enough and fast enough in the wood." "Darker and darker as the leaves fall thicker," she replied, "and darkest of all when they are on the ground, and the trees bare." "What will happen then?"