Bella, as she wept on seeing him disappear, was not aware of one circumstance that made Jerry spur his horse viciously. As he entered the village at one end he had seen Lord Twesildown riding out of it at the other, and, not unnaturally, he connected Bella's 'headache' with that circumstance; but the young lord's appearance there was, in reality, the merest chance contingency in the world. 'He was not one bit in love with me,' thought Bella, when days succeeded each other in slow and monotonous succession, and Jerry came no more. 'Well, he has inflicted a sore blow upon my woman's vanity.' She became moped and full of ennui; day followed day in monotonous succession, and she sat by a window with a novel in her hand unread, or some piece of feminine work forgotten, listlessly watching the leafless and dripping trees, for the season was dreary, wet, and stormy; the mist crept up from the adjacent stream and whitened all the gardens and the village green; and a cold, a sheeny, a wan crescent moon came out over Wilmot Woods. 'What a life I live just now!' sighed Bella; 'one might as well be in one's grave as here at Wilmothurst.' CHAPTER VI. AT ALDERSHOT. Some weeks had now passed since Bevil Goring last saw Alison Cheyne--weeks that seemed as ages to him! If weeks seem interminable when a pair of hopeful lovers are thus separated and can count to a day when they shall meet again, absence 'making their hearts grow fonder,' what must they seem to those who are hopelessly apart and kept in utter ignorance of each other's movements, thoughts, and plans! Mrs. Trelawney at Chilcote Grange heard nothing of her young friend, or of Lord Cadbury, and though the movements of the 'upper ten' are pretty accurately chronicled in the society papers, as they are named, no record was given of those in the yacht, which Goring attributed to its voyaging in the Mediterranean; yet he thought it most singular that it had not been heard of turning up at Naples, Palermo, Civita Vecchia, Malta, or elsewhere affected by tourists and travellers. Had Alison by this time bent to the circumstances that surrounded her--bent to her father's influence, and, in utter weariness of heart and despair of escape, accepted Lord Cadbury--been married to him perhaps? The public prints would in these days of watchful and incessant paragraphing have duly announced such an event; but now to be destined for foreign service, and for a protracted and doubtful period, the dangers of war and climate apart, rendered the chances of their ever meeting again extremely problematical.