the deep sense of wrong and degradation overwhelming her, she dropped on her knees, and, compressing her throbbing temples with her hands, wept long and bitterly. She was as a statue mourning over itself, as the base of its pedestal from which it had been rudely hurled in scorn and derision by some senseless mob. In this mood Dorcas visited her, and endeavoured to soothe, though even she blamed, her. Then Sylvia came, and inveighed against her brother's mad blindness; for, "Had not Dora confessed?--to be sure she had. Minnie was too good a girl to deceive any one, or compromise herself by meeting this Tremenhere!" Whereupon, Minnie, taking Dora's part, declared that she alone was to blame for all. Sylvia's anger arose at this "mock sentimentality," as she termed it. "It is positively absurd," she cried, "endeavouring to screen Dora! All, but my foolish brother, know that you are quite innocent in this affair. A pretty thing, indeed, to accuse yourself of so disgraceful, unpardonable, indelicate an act, as privately meeting any man!" This certainly did not soothe her; but the crowning of all was when Juvenal entered, and, reproaching her as a disgrace to them all, declared she should not quit her room until she consented to marry Marmaduke! Oh! then Minnie's spirit rebelled; she paced the room when he was gone, and nothing scarcely could have been desperate enough to satisfy her exasperation at that moment, by way of revenge! Poor girl, revenge, like curses, sends its chickens home to roost! Thus passed the first day, and the second something like it, and then evening came. Juvenal, like other little bodies, was a great man in a brief temporary power; he was master of Gatestone, and resolved to show all that he was so. All this was Burton's counselling; consequently, when the second day came, and Minnie still was obdurate, and firmly refused even to see Marmaduke Burton, should he come, her uncle resolved to tighten her chains, and so he forbade even Dorcas or Sylvia to see her, only Dame Gillett and himself! Even the squire had confidence in the housekeeper, he had made her frequent presents, for which she had been very grateful; moreover, he knew she had favoured his suit with Minnie; he and Juvenal--indeed all were more or less ignorant of her great error about Miles's affections being placed on Lady Dora--and none knew that she had not quite cast from her regards the "comely boy" Tremenhere. She certainly urged _for_ Marmaduke, when she went to Minnie's room, and as certainly did she ignorantly add fresh fuel to feed her love for his cousin, by beguiling the time to the prisoner, relating how Master Miles had come last night again to her room, frightening her out of her wits for fear he should be seen, and how he was nearly mad himself to see Minnie--poor young man! "just to speak, of course, of Lady Dora; and she didn't think that lady had behaved well to him, and she pitied him from the _very_ bottom of her heart," &c. &c. &c.