Miss Hillary pondered upon this mystery while she dressed,--unaided this morning, for she did not care to endure her maid’s sympathetic remarks upon her pale face and heavy eyes; unaided, for how soon that pretty Twickenham paradise, with all its dependencies, might pass away from her, unsubstantial as the fairy palace in which Princess Balroubadour floated away to Africa! Maude put on her plainest morning dress, and went straight to Julia’s room, intending to make her peace with that young lady, at any cost of self-humiliation. No base thought of Julia’s obligations, no remembrance of the favours that had been heaped upon the Irish girl in that hospitable habitation, had any place in Maude Hillary’s mind. She thought of her friend as tenderly as she might have thought of an only sister, and she remembered nothing except the great wrong that had been done to Julia by the defection of her lover. The breach between them was not to be narrowed. When Maude entered her friend’s bedroom, she only found an empty and desolate-looking apartment, in which open wardrobes and drawers, and a dressing-table, cleared of all its pretty frivolities, bore witness to the angry Julia’s departure. Miss Hillary’s maid came running along the corridor, while her mistress stood amazed in Miss Desmond’s deserted chamber. “Oh, Miss,” cried the girl, “to think as you should get up and dress yourself without a bit of help, while I’ve been waiting and listening for the bell these last two hours! Miss Desmond, she have gone, Miss, above an hour ago, and have took all her boxes in a fly to the station, but wouldn’t have none of the servants to go with her; and Oh, Miss, she looked as white as that toilet-cover.” That was all Maude could hear of her sometime friend’s abrupt departure from that pleasant dwelling-place, in which she had enjoyed such a luxurious home. This was all that the servants could tell their young mistress about the splendid Julia; but in the study, where the scene of the previous night had been enacted, Maude found a letter directed to herself, in Miss Desmond’s handwriting. It was a very brief missive; almost such a one as an English Elizabeth, or a Russian Catherine, might have written. “For your father’s hospitality,” wrote Miss Desmond, “I shall always remain grateful, and shall be sorry to hear of any evil that may befall him. The debt I owe to _you_ I shall also know how to remember, and shall wait the time and opportunity for its repayment.--J. D.” Maude sat for some time musing sorrowfully upon this oracular epistle. She was not in any wise terrified by her friend’s threats; she was only sorry for Julia’s disappointment. “She must have loved Francis Tredethlyn very dearly,” Miss Hillary thought, sorrowfully, “or she would never feel his conduct so deeply. And yet I have often fancied that she spoke of him coldly, almost contemptuously.”