“I wish to be alone!” said a voice from within, and Ida immediately retired. When the carriage which had been ordered by Augustine Aumerle rolled up to the front of the vicarage, Ida was sent again to try her powers of persuasion, to induce the countess to avail herself of it to return to her husband’s home. Ida felt the errand painful, and almost hopeless. She hesitated for a moment ere she knocked, and heard within the sound of a pen moving rapidly over the paper. “Annabella, my love,” began Ida, as she softly unclosed the door. The countess was bending over her desk, apparently absorbed in writing. Her back was towards the door, but she started on the entrance of Ida, and turning hastily round showed a countenance crimsoned to the temples with a burning flush. “I can’t be disturbed!” she exclaimed in a voice strangely harsh and impatient. “O dear cousin!” cried Ida, “if you would but listen for a moment—” “I will hear you to-morrow,” said Annabella, “let me feel that in this room at least I am safe from unwelcome intrusion!” Intrusion! what a word—and from those lips! Ida Aumerle was deeply hurt, not to say offended, and returned again to her family mortified and dejected. The vicar breathed a weary sigh, and Mrs. Aumerle said something about “a termagant,” which made Mabel extremely angry. “So then I must be off!” said Augustine. “I had so little hope of the fair lady’s yielding, that, as you see, my travelling bag is all ready. Farewell, Mrs. Aumerle; thanks for your hospitality. Lawrence, remember that I expect you all at Aspendale on the 12th. I shall be glad if by that time you think my friend Mabel sufficiently fledged to try a flight in the blue empyrean!” After her uncle’s departure Ida retired with a heavy heart to the little room which, since Annabella’s arrival, she had shared with her sister Mabel. The gratitude which a woman feels towards one who has offered to her his home and his heart, and the affection which Ida had from childhood entertained for her cousin, rendered both the earl and the countess objects of deep interest to the maiden. Family division jarred on her soul, like discord on a musical ear, and Ida felt perhaps as forcibly as her stepmother could, the evil of the course which Annabella was wilfully pursuing. She was wounded by the words of impatience from her cousin, which sensitiveness construed into actual unkindness, and Ida could scarcely draw her thoughts sufficiently from the subject which engrossed them, to write a letter in reply to some petition for relief which she knew that it would be wrong to postpone. Ida lingered over her letter till she began to fear that it might be late for the post, to which she proposed taking it herself. As she was putting on her scarf, in preparation for her walk, Ida heard the countess’s bell,—Annabella was ringing for her maid. When Ida left her apartment she met the attendant in the passage, on her return from the room of the lady.