Surprised at receiving no answer, she looked up, and saw the expression on Tring's face. "Oh, Mary Hughes!" There was so genuine an amount of pity in the tone, of some unnamed dread in the look, that Mary Hughes dropped her needle in alarm. "Is anybody took ill?" she asked. "Not that, not that," answered Tring, subduing her voice to a whisper, and leaning forward to speak; "your sister, Martha Ann--I can't tell it you." "What of her?" gasped Mary Hughes, a dreadful prevision of the truth rushing over her heart, and turning it to sickness. "She has gone away with Mr. Robert Carr." Mary Hughes, not of a strong nature, became faint. Tring got some water for her, and related to her as much as she had heard. "But how is it known that she's gone? How did Mr. Carr learn it?" asked the poor young woman. Tring could not tell how he learnt it. She gathered from the conversation that it was known in the town; and Mr. William seemed to know it. "You'll spare me while I run home for a minute, Tring," pleaded Mary Hughes; "I can't live till I know the rights and the wrongs of it. I can't believe that she'd do such a thing. I'll be back as soon as I can." "Go, and welcome," cried Tring, in her sympathy; "don't hurry back. What's our gowns by the side of this dreadful shock? Poor Martha Ann!" "I can't believe she's gone; I can't believe it," reiterated the dressmaker, as she hastily flung on her cloak and bonnet; "there was never a modester girl lived than Martha Ann. It's some dreadful untruth that has got about." The way in which Mr. Carr had learnt it so soon was this--one of the outside passengers of the coach, a young man of the name of Hart, had been only going as far as Purford, where the coach dropped him. He hurried over his errand there, and hurried back to Westerbury, big with the importance of what he had seen, and burning to make it known. Taking his course direct to Mr. Carr's, and only stopping to tell everybody he met on the way, he found that gentleman at home, and electrified him with the recital. From thence he ran to the house of Edward Hughes, and found Miss Hughes in a sea of tears, and her brother pacing the rooms in what Mr. Hart called a storm of passion. The young lady, it seems, had been already missed, and one of the gossips to whom Mr. Hart had first imparted his tale, had flown direct with it to the brother and sister. "Why don't you go after her?" asked Hart; "I'd follow her to the end of the world if she was my sister. I'd take it out of him, too." Ah, it was easy to say, why don't you go after her? But there were no telegraphs in those days, and there was not yet a rail from London to Westerbury. Robert Carr and the girl were half-way to London by that time; and the earliest conveyance that could be taken was the night mail. "It's of no use," said Edward Hughes, moodily; "they have got too great a start. Let her go, ungrateful chit! As she has made her bed, so must she lie on it."