Better that he should be told that his wife had been found lying dead upon the hard, cruel road, than that he should hear that she had left him for another; a false and degraded creature! "Why did she trust herself to the companionship of this man?" he asked himself. "Why did she disgrace herself by leaving her guests in the company of a young man who ought to be little more than a stranger to her? She is no ignorant or foolish girl; she has shown herself able to hold her own in the most trying positions. What madness could have possessed her, that she should bring disgrace upon herself and me by such conduct as this?" The grooms came back after a search that had been utterly in vain. No trace of the missing lady had been discovered. Inquiries had been made everywhere along the road, but without result. No gig had been seen to pass between the neighbourhood of the Wizard's Cave and Raynham Castle. Sir Oswald abandoned himself to despair. There was no longer any hope: his wife had fled from him. Bitter, indeed, was the penalty which he was called upon to pay for his romantic marriage--his blind confidence in the woman who had fascinated and bewitched him. He bowed his head beneath the blow, and alone, hidden from the cruel gaze of the world, he resigned himself to his misery. All that night he sat alone, his head buried in his clasped hands, stunned and bewildered by his agony. His valet, Joseph Millard, knocked at the door at the usual hour, anxious to assist at his master's toilet; but the door was securely locked, and Sir Oswald told his servant that he needed no help. He spoke in a firm voice; for he knew that the valet's ear would be keen to mark any evidence of his misery. When the man was gone, he rose up for the first time, and looked across the sunlit woods. A groan of agony burst from his lips as he gazed upon that beautiful landscape. He had brought his young wife to be mistress of this splendid domain. He had shown her that fair scene; and had told her that she was to be queen over all those proud possessions until the day of her death. No hand was ever to rob her of them. They were the free gift of his boundless love! to be shared only by her children, should heaven bless her and her husband with inheritors for this ancient estate. He had never been weary of testifying his devotion, his passionate love; and yet, before she had been his wife three months, she left him for another. While he stood before the open window, with these bitter thoughts in his mind, he heard the sound of wheels in the corridor without. The wheels belonged to an invalid chair, used by Captain Copplestone when the gout held him prisoner, a self-propelling chair, in which the captain could make his way where he pleased. The captain knocked at his old comrade's door. "Let me in, Oswald" he said; "I want to see you immediately." "Not this morning, my dear Copplestone; I can't see any one this morning," answered the baronet.