Ida watched her receding figure with a very heavy heart. “It might have been so different,” she murmured to herself; “her heart was touched, her pride was giving way, when—” and turning towards the spot where her step-mother stood, Ida could not refrain from the exclamation, “it was your coming that changed all!” Without lingering for a reply to the hastily spoken word, Ida sought solitude in the quiet arbour where she had, as we have seen, held converse with her sister upon subjects high and holy. Ida’s only companions now were bitter meditations. She had reproached her father’s wife, but was her own conscience clear even as regarded Annabella? Ida recalled with deep distress her own misgivings on the day on which the countess must have written her fatal paper. “If I had only spoken to her then,—if I had only pleaded with her then, before the irrevocable step had been taken, oh! it would never have come to this!” and with the anguish of unavailing regret, Ida Aumerle mourned over her sin of omission. CHAPTER XVII. CONSCIENCE ASLEEP. “Those, however, who having no such plea to urge, are envious, sour, discontented, irritable, uncharitable, have good ground to suspect the genuineness of their Christianity. Grace sweetens while it sanctifies.”—GUTHRIE. How wide a difference do we find to exist between the consciences of those who hold the same faith, and profess to be governed by the same commandments! To some—sin appears like the speck on a bridal robe, a disfiguring blot seen at a glance, which offends the eye, and to remove which every means at once must be taken. To others—it is a thing as little to be marked as the same speck on a dark, time-worn garment. The possessor wears it with an easy mind, perhaps all unconscious of the stain! Thus while Ida grieved at the recollection of that false delicacy or hidden pride, that had made her shrink from intruding herself upon her cousin at a time when her presence might have been of essential service, Bardon felt not the least self-reproach for the evil counsel which he had given to the countess. It was to him merely a subject of pleasant speculation whether she would follow it or not, and he was extremely impatient for the day when the appearance of the next number of the —— Magazine would set all his doubts to rest. Bardon longed to see a good home-thrust at the pride of Reginald, Earl of Dashleigh. The mortification of the peer—his confusion—his indignation—was a subject upon which the imagination of the doctor actually feasted, for he had never forgotten or forgiven the words that he had overheard at the Hall.