June gave way to July, July to August, August to September. Lottie reigned at Brackenhill, and Mrs. Middleton, whose heart clung to the neighborhood where she had lived so long, had taken a house on the other side of Fordborough. Between it and her old home lay an impassable gulf--none the less real that it was not marked on the county map. It appeared there as a distance of five miles and a quarter, with a good road, but Mrs. Horace Thorne, as well as Mrs. Middleton, knew better. Lottie laughed, and Horace's resentment was so keen that he was almost unconscious of his pain. Percival's utter disappearance was a nine days' wonder in Fordborough, and when curiosity was dying out it flamed up again on the discovery that the marriage was not only put off, but was off altogether. This fact, considered in connection with the old squire's will, gave rise to the idea that there was something queer about Mr. Percival Thorne--that he had been found out at the last moment, and had lost both wife and legacy in consequence. "No doubt it was hushed up on condition he should take himself off. The best thing they could do, but how sad for an old county family! Still, there will be black sheep, and what a mercy it was that Miss Langton was saved from him!" So people talked, and generally added that they could not tell why--just a feeling, you know--but they never had liked that Percival Thorne. In September, Godfrey Hammond cut a tiny slip out of the _Times_ and sent it to the banished man: "On the 15th, the wife of Horace Thorne, Esq., Brackenhill, Fordborough, of a son." Percival ate his breakfast that morning with the scrap of paper by his plate, and looked at it with fierce, defiant eyes. Lottie was avenged indeed--she would never know how bitterly. He had sworn that he would never think of Brackenhill, yet without his knowledge it had been the background to his thoughts of everything. And now the cruel injustice of his fate had taken a new lease of life in this baby boy: it would outlive him, it would become eternal. Percival leapt to his feet with a short laugh: "Well, that's over and done with! Good luck to the poor little fellow! he's innocent enough. And I don't suppose he'll ever know what a scoundrel his father was." So saying, he glanced at his watch and marched off to his work.