How often had she read in novels and romances, and how often had she seen on the stage, the story of a heroine--a wretched girl placed in precisely the cruel predicament in which she now found herself, and deemed that such dramatic and doleful situations could only exist in the fancies of the author or of the playwright! Without, the cold and wintry wind had torn away the last leaves from every tree long since; the last flowers were also long dead; the chill night rain pattered, with sleet and hail, upon the windows; and, like the heart of Alison, all nature seemed desolate and sad. She shuddered when she heard the moaning of the wind, and thought of the Spectre Hound. Could it be that she had indeed seen it? CHAPTER XVI. CADBURY'S PLAN OR PLOT. And now to relate what more came to pass at Chilcote, and where Alison had vanished to. The morning came to her after a sleepless night, and she was incapable of giving the answer to which Sir Ranald had hopefully looked forward. She was in a species of mental fever. So passed the day--the day she knew that she could not meet Bevil--and the short winter evening was passing into another night, when the ringing of the door bell gave her a kind of electric shock, so thoroughly was her whole nervous system shaken. The hour was a dark and gloomy one; snow flakes were falling athwart the dreary landscape of leafless trees, and the north wind moaned sadly round old Chilcote and its giant beeches, with a wail that seemed consonant with disasters impending there, when Lord Cadbury arrived, by chance as it seemed, but in reality to see the effect of the bomb he had fired from the office of Mr. Solomon Slagg, in St. Clement's Lane. The curtains had been drawn over the windows by the tiny little hands of Daisy Prune; a coal fire blazed pleasantly in the grate, and threw a ruddy glow over all the panelled room and the family portraits, particularly on those of the two Cavalier brothers, looking so proud and defiant in their gorgeous costume, that ere long would be finding their way to the brokers in Wardour Street or elsewhere. Sir Ranald and Alison sat alone--alone in their misery--when the peer came jauntily in, and took in the whole situation at a glance--the poor girl, with all her rare beauty, looking utterly disconsolate; the bankrupt father, with all his pride, looking utterly desperate! Alison was seated, or rather crouching, on a black bearskin rug by Sir Ranald's side--one arm caressingly thrown over his knees, and she was in the act of touching his wrinkled hand with hers with a fondness pretty to see, and then he stooped to take her face between them both and looked into her blue-grey eyes wistfully. They formed a lovely picture, but it touched not the heart of my Lord Cadbury of Cadbury Court. The bezique cards lay on the table close by, where old Archie had placed them as usual; but they were unnoticed now. Father and daughter were quite past playing their quiet game together.