"Good heavens! no; I trust we may often thus converse again." "Then I shall tell Miles as soon as he returns; he cannot but approve my receiving his friends with what courtesy I am mistress of. If I have been wanting in due reserve, my lord may excuse it--I am but a country bred girl." "But the most charming one I _ever_ met!" he warmly exclaimed, endeavouring to seize her hand; but Minnie's delicacy had taken the alarm, she drew back, and, laying her hand on the bell, said quietly-- "Your lordship has no message to leave?" "None," he answered, slightly disconcerted by her sudden reserve--"I cannot think of troubling you; I will write." The bell sounded beneath her fingers; with perfect composure she curtsied. He durst not again attempt to take her hand, and he followed the serious maid to the outer gate; there he turned, but no eye was watching him, for Minnie had sunk on a seat, and was lost in memory, not of the most agreeable sort, of many strange things her visitor had said, which created an unpleasant sensation, and yet she could not tell where, or why. Lord Randolph rode on in perplexed imaginings, too; she had left an impression on his mind of pleasure and pain. The former, that irresistible feeling we experience when gazing upon either a lovely face, or lovely picture. The latter, was sorrow that so fair a shrine should be desecrated; for, though a man of the world, he was no libertine. He would rather at any time save a woman than lose her. If he found her lost, irretrievably so, he followed the current of worldly recklessness, and left moralizing to a more fitting occasion. Nothing could have persuaded him that this girl had voluntarily chosen a life of degradation--some arts, some entrapment, must have been used; and with these thoughts in his mind he turned into Loundes Square, intending to call upon Lady Dora. As he turned the corner of a street leading into it, her ladyship's brougham passed him rapidly; the blinds were half drawn down, as if she wished to avoid recognition, and she herself was leaning back, reading a letter attentively. Evidently he had not been noticed; for a moment he hesitated, and then, turning round, cantered after her. Her groom drove on, however, at a rapid pace, and Lord Randolph followed. "When she stops," he said to himself, "I'll join her; she may be induced, perhaps, to tell me more about this unhappy girl." But Lady Dora did not stop; and what at first had been done unpremeditatedly, now became a sort of link in the mystery of the last two days. Where could she be going alone at that rapid pace? Overtake her he could not, without calling to her groom; so he followed about twenty yards behind. At the corner of Charles Street, Soho, there was a stoppage of carriages; hers passed, but his horse, being rather spirited, made some demur before a coal-waggon; and, when he reached the square, it was just in time to see Lady Dora enter the bazaar hastily, with her veil down.