But there was a fascination to Lady Bell in the very name of Sundon, conjuring up, as it did, the beautiful young woman of the rank and fashion to which Lady Bell was born and bred, more fortunate than Lady Bell, inasmuch as Mrs. Sundon’s sun had not been eclipsed before noon. She had not been sentenced to be the desolate young wife of an old bear of a country Squire, who would tie her down to his bear-garden, and bait her with his cousins—parsons’ wives and daughters. Mrs. Sundon had hope and heart in her youth and beauty as she shared and enjoyed life with her comely and elegant young husband, whose listlessness and haggardness even had a charm, by force of contrast, in Lady Bell’s eyes. Lady Bell sat with her knotting in the far window, her hand with its shuttle arrested, her scared eyes and ears watching furtively and greedily the club of men by whom her presence was forgotten. In the absorbing, horrified speculation on the broken words and dark hints which reached her, Lady Bell forgot the market-place and the country-town sights which had occupied her when she had arrived at Peasmarsh, and on which the declining September sun was now brooding peacefully. With her woman’s faculty of leaping at a conclusion, and anticipating every result—painting it in extreme and exaggerated colours—Lady Bell saw the couple whom she had wistfully admired and envied in a new light. She saw the slim, refined gentleman suddenly set upon in the dusk, by a band of hired and armed ruffians, and brutally mauled and beaten. She saw his battered, disfigured body carried home to his wife. She saw the high-spirited, dignified woman flinging herself down, in the abandonment of grief, by the wreck, apostrophizing it under fond names, lifting the unconscious head on her knees, wiping the blood-stains from the face, to leave it white and blank, tearing her hair at the shame and anguish of the sight. CHAPTER XII. BETRAYAL. Lady Bell could no more remain quiet under the knowledge she had acquired than she could help to commit the contemplated deed. She was wildly at a loss how to proceed, but whatever plans crossed her mind, the idea never entered it to interfere by remonstrating with Squire Trevor. She knew by experience how bitterly hard it would be to turn him from any project. She seemed to know, as well, of how little moment she was to him, so that her opinion would not weigh a feather’s weight in the scale with regard to what he should do or leave undone; nay, that any overture on her part to defend Mr. Sundon, would probably only accelerate his fate.