earl stood, the passive, yet hopeful object of the countess’s devotion. Mrs. Mills stripped to the extent that was necessary, and my lord put on the cast-off garments, his wife having pinned her own petticoats about him. She also painted his eyebrows to match those of Mrs. Mills, and distributed white and rouge over his face and chin, the better to give him the appearance of a woman and to conceal that of an unshaven man. Mrs. Mills then put on the dress which Mrs. Morgan had brought in for her under _her_ clothes, and Lady Nithsdale led her out, as she had done the other lady, but with no feigned weeping in her handkerchief, as when she passed in――imploring her to hasten, for her life, the coming of the tardy Evans. Guards, their wives and daughters, looked sympathisingly as they passed, and the sentinel officiously opened the door; but for whom he and the rest took this second departing lady, in a new costume, is beyond all conjecture. [Sidenote: _ESCAPE OF LORD NITHSDALE._] The countess having now passed out the two ladies whom she had brought in with her, returned to the earl’s cell, to further prepare for his escape in the guise of the weeping woman, Mrs. Mills. When all was ready, save the half-ashamed, but not too reluctant earl himself, and the time was ‘’twixt the gloaming an’ the murk,’ the dusk before the lamps were lit, Lady Nithsdale led her lord over the threshhold. He buried his face in his handkerchief as Mrs. Mills had done. His lady kept him close before her, that the guard might not observe his gait, and went on imploring him as my dear Mrs. Betty, ‘for the love of God, to go and hasten the company of her maid, Mrs. Evans.’ At the foot of the stairs appeared the faithful Evans herself. She took the supposed woman by the arm and went away with him out of the Tower. Thus, the countess had brought in two ladies and had passed out _three_; and no guard or gatekeeper seems to have been at all awake to a fact so suspicious. [Sidenote: _LADY NITHSDALE._]