The long, flower-besprinkled grass grew all round, beneath the bending, leafy boughs, through the shadows of which came perpetually shifting chequers of sunshine. There could just be seen, down a vista, the quaint, grey house of Nutfield, with the last year’s yellow corn-stacks beyond the orchard, mellowing and warming the green and grey tints under the blue and white cloud-flecked sky. Mrs. Sundon with her fine figure and face, in one of her white wrappers and close caps, came slowly up between the interlacing boughs; she stopped beside Lady Bell and the child, looking down upon them. The group was very sweet and graceful, and wanted only a St. Joseph and a little St. John to make it stand for one of the old Italian “Riposos.” “Look here, Lady Bell,” said Mrs. Sundon, putting her finger on a paragraph in a newspaper which she held in her hand. Lady Bell started and rose up in vague perturbation. For precaution’s sake Mrs. Sundon had abstained from giving her friend, even in private, that friend’s name and title, since Mrs. Sundon had discovered Lady Bell at Nutfield. What had surprised the compromising words from Mrs. Sundon now? Lady Bell took the newspaper and looked at the place indicated. Her hand was shaking, her breath was coming fast, her eyes were dazzled; but the intimation was so plain and direct that she took in its meaning at a glance. There was no ambiguity there to prevent the message reaching its destination and doing its work. “If Lady Bell Trevor wish to see her husband in life, let her return at once to Trevor Court.” A mist passed before Lady Bell’s eyes; the sunny June orchard, with the soft, fair child whom Mrs. Sundon had taken into her arms, and Mrs. Sundon herself, all grew in a moment blurred and dark, as if the very dews of death and remorse had fallen on them. “Oh, Mrs. Sundon, what shall I do?” cried Lady Bell, wringing her hands. “I did not love him, I had no cause to love him; but I was his wife, who was yet no wife to him, and he is a dying man.” “Go back to him immediately,” advised Mrs. Sundon, “while there is still time to wipe out your offence to him—it was light compared with his to you. But it is ill having an unsettled score with the dead. This would hang like a millstone round your neck, and weigh you down all your days.”