"This is the story I had to tell you, Ludlow, and to leave to your discretion to use when the time comes. Within the last week Blackett has made further attempts, and has again failed. Lionel is in London; but while I live he does not enter this house. I shall, after a while, when I am able, which I am not now, let him know that search has been unsuccessfully made for his wife, and demand that he shall furnish me with any clue in his possession, under the threat of immediate exposure. This, and every other plan, may be at any moment rendered impossible by my death; therefore I write this, and entreat you to continue the search until this woman be found, dead or living. So only can Annie's home be made happy and reputable for her when I shall have left it for ever. You will receive this from Annie's hands; a packet addressed to her will not be neglected or thrown aside; and if it becomes necessary for you to act for her, she will have the knowledge of the confidence I repose in you to support her in her acceptance of your interference and obedience to your advice. I confide her to you, my dear Ludlow--as I said before--as the dearest living thing in all the world to me.--Yours ever, "CATERHAM." CHAPTER V. DISMAY. Mrs. Ludlow and Til had concluded the meal which is so generally advanced to a position of unnatural importance in a household devoid of the masculine element _en permanence_; and, the tea-things having been removed, the old lady, according to the established order, was provided with a book, over which she was expected to fall comfortably asleep. But she did not adhere to the rule of her harmless and placid life on this particular occasion. The "cross" was there--no doubt about it; and it was no longer indefinite in its nature, but very real, and beginning to be very heavy. Under the pressure of its weight Geoffrey's mother was growing indifferent to, even unobservant of, the small worries which had formerly occupied her mind, and furnished the subject-matter of her pardonable little querulousness and complaints--a grievance in no way connected with the tradespeople, and uninfluenced by the "greatest plagues in life"--which no reduction of duties involving cheap groceries, and no sumptuary laws restraining servant-gal-ism within limits of propriety in respect of curls and crinoline, had any power to assuage,--had taken possession of her now, and she fidgeted and fumed no longer, but was haunted by apprehension and sorely troubled.