“What piece of news?” She looked so scared that he was almost frightened by the impression his words had produced. “Oh, you think there is something between--? But that is unjust to poor Matilda. She could not think of such a thing so soon. She is only amusing herself. You are very cruel to my sister,” cried Verna, turning her back upon him without another word. He went out with a smile, and jumped into his dog-cart, glad to get clear of the whole business. It was nothing to him; but she, poor soul, fled to her own room--so passionately excited that she could scarcely keep still as she rushed up those warm, noiseless, carpeted stairs which had seemed to her like the very path to Elysium, a little while before. There, at least, howsoever things might turn out, her power and reign were over. She could have torn her hair or her dress, or anything that came within her reach, in her passion. It was all over. A mean and small life of dependence and servility was all that now remained to her. To be turned out one way or another, what did it matter? Nay, it would be better to be turned out with Matilda than by her; better to share her downfall than to be crushed by her triumphant prosperity. Thus of the three people affected by Fanshawe’s message, there was but one person whom it affected mildly, and that the one most concerned. Matilda, after her fit of abuse of Marjory and the old family, shed a few angry tears, and then was comfortable again, and ready for such dalliance with her lover, interspersed by quarrels, as was her only fashion of mental amusement. But it would be hard to describe the mingled passions in Hepburn’s mind, as he knelt by the sofa, scorning, hating, adoring, the pretty, miserable, beautiful creature who had bewitched him. It was not her fault; all women were so; did not every sage bear testimony to it, from Solomon downwards? And the poor young fellow, in the revulsion of his feelings, took to admiring her more and more, dwelling upon her beauty, her movements, her glances, all the outward part of her. These were what women possessed to make men mad and happy--nothing more. And Verna up-stairs sobbed in an hysterical passion. She had lost her very life. CHAPTER XXII.