On the day subsequent to the dinner-party at Pembridge Square she felt too ill to leave her bed till the afternoon was well advanced. She was, however, visited by Miss De Jobbyns, who gave her a very inflated account of Goring's attentions to herself, how she completely 'snuffed out the three Le Robbynson girls,' and gave him credit for many flattering, and certainly peculiar, utterances that Alison thought very unlike the Goring that she knew. Still she was painfully uncertain what to think, and was very glad when her garrulous visitor, after readjusting her frizzled hair in the mirror and inspecting the few trifles that lay on the toilet-table, took her departure. Alison, we have said, could not throw herself in Goring's way; her pride and delicacy, all love apart, revolted at the idea and she now actually trembled lest the chance mention of her not very common name by any of the De Jobbyns' family might lead to the discovery of her identity in her present humble position. And now a letter, on the envelope of which a coronet figured, was, after being long inspected, and the cause of much surmise by Mrs. and Miss De Jobbyns, handed to her by a servant. She opened it and read. It would seem that, though Bevil Goring had failed to obtain from the vicar of Chilcote the London address of Alison and a clue to her circumstances, the 'Right Honourable Lord Cadbury' had succeeded in obtaining both, in virtue of his rank, we presume; and the result was this letter, most subtily and cunningly worded, and dated not from his club or from Cadbury Court, but from the villa of his 'lady friend' at St. John's Wood, offering her a home there, and containing what she conceived at first to be another offer of marriage; but, on re-reading it, the real meaning of and nature of the document came before her, in all its insulting form and truth, as it fell from her hand ere she tore it into minute fragments with trembling fingers. She grew deadly pale, but her lips became firm and set; her bosom heaved, and all the purity of her nature, her pride of old position and race, _l'esprit de famille_ which her father had inculcated rose within her, she covered her face with her hands as if to thrust back her tears, and exclaimed, in a low voice, 'Oh, papa, papa! It wanted but this insult to complete the humiliation of my life!' So the parvenu peer sought--but in vain--to put a keystone to the edifice of his own innate rascality. At last she rose from her bed and proceeded to dress herself with the intention of visiting the vicar without delay to beseech him to find her another home; but--on looking about her toilet-table, where she had certainly left it over night--she missed her locket--the locket with the likeness of Bevil in it! She instituted a strict if hurried search over all her little room, but no trace of it could be found.