He urged Villiers, meanwhile, not to rely too entirely on the conviction so strong in himself, but to pursue his plan of discovery with vigour. Villiers needed no spur. His eagerness was fully alive; he could not rest till he had rescued his mother-in-law from solitude and obscurity. He visited Reading; he extended his inquiries to Newbury: here more light broke in on his researches. He heard of Lady Lodore's illness--of her having resided for several months at a villa in the neighbourhood, while slowly recovering from a fever by which for a long time her life had been endangered. He heard also of her departure, her return to London. Then again all was obscurity. The innkeepers and letters of post-horses in London, were all visited in vain--the mystery became as impenetrable as ever. It seemed most probable that she was living in some obscure part of the metropolis--Ethel's heart sunk within her at the thought. Edward wrote to Saville to communicate this intelligence, which put an end to the idea of her being in France--but he was already gone on to Bagneres. He himself perambulated London and its outskirts, but all in vain. The very thought that she should be residing in a place so sad, nay, so humiliating, without one gilding circumstance to solace poverty and obscurity, was unspeakably painful both to Villiers and his wife. Ethel thought of her own abode in Duke street during her husband's absence, and how miserable and forlorn it had been--she now wept bitterly over her mother's fate; even Fanny's philosophy could not afford consolation for these ideas. An accident, however, gave a new turn to their conjectures. In the draw of a work-table, Ethel found an advertisement cut out of a newspaper, setting forth the merits of a cottage to be let near Rhaiyder Gowy in Radnorshire, and with this, a letter from the agent at Rhaiyder, dated the 13th of May, in answer to inquiries concerning the rent and particulars. The letter intimated, that if the account gave satisfaction, the writer would get the cottage prepared for the tenant immediately, and the lady might take possession at the time mentioned, on the 1st of June. The day after finding this letter, Villiers set out for Wales.