The Judge would rather have been left alone, but he was polite enough not to say so, though he did suggest that Esther Bennett, at least, should leave, a hint upon which she acted at once, going back to New York that very day. Mildred would rather that Geraldine and Lilian too should have gone, but as this could not be she stipulated in their presence that Oliver and no other should break the news to Lawrence,—“he would do it so gently,” she said, and she bade him say to Lawrence that “though she never could forget him, she did not wish to see him. She could not bear it, and he must not come after her.” Oliver promised compliance with her request, and the next morning she left Beechwood, accompanied by Mr. Thornton, who insisted upon going with her as far as the station, where she must leave the cars and take the stage to Dresden, a distance of ten miles. Here he bade her good-by, with many assurances of affection and good-will, to none of which Mildred listened. Her heart was too full of grief to respond at once to this new claimant for her love, and she was glad when he was gone and she alone with her sorrow. [Illustration: Flowers] CHAPTER XVIII. THE GUESTS AT THE HOTEL. “Where will you be left, miss?” asked the good-humored driver, thrusting his head in at the window of the coach, in one corner of which Mildred sat, closely veiled and shrinking as far as possible from observation. “At the Stevens Hotel,” she answered, and the driver returned: “Oh, yes, Stevens Hotel. I have another passenger who stops there. Here he comes,” and he held open the door for a remarkably fine-looking man, who, taking the seat opposite Mildred, drew out a book in which for a time he seemed wholly absorbed, never looking up, except once indeed when a fat old woman entered and sat down beside him, saying, as she sank puffing among the cushions, that “she shouldn’t pester him long,—she was only going a mile or so to visit her daughter-in-law, who had twins.” Involuntarily Mildred glanced at the gentleman, who, showing a very handsome set of teeth, again resumed his book, while she scanned his features curiously, they seemed to her so familiar, so like something she had seen before. “Who is he?” she kept asking herself, and she was about concluding that she must have seen him in Boston, when the stage stopped again before one of those low-roofed buildings so common in New England, and the fat old lady alighted, thanking the gentleman for holding the paper of anise-seed and catnip, which all the way had been her special care.