The memory of that night of anguish in Yarborough Tower, and that still darker hour of shame and despair in which Sit Oswald had refused to believe her innocent, was never absent from the mind of Honoria Eversleigh. She brooded upon these dark memories. Time could not lessen their bitterness. Even the soft influence of her infant's love could not banish those fatal recollections. Time passed. The child grew and flourished, beautiful to her mother's enraptured eyes; and yet, even by the side of that fair baby's face arose the dark image of Victor Carrington. For a long time the county people had kept close watch upon the proceedings of the lady at the castle. The county people discovered that Lady Eversleigh never left Raynham; that she devoted herself to the rearing of her child as entirely as if she had been the humblest peasant-woman; and that she expended more money upon solid works of charity than had ever before been so spent by any member of the Eversleigh family, though that family had been distinguished by much generosity and benevolence. The county people shrugged their shoulders contemptuously. They could not believe in the goodness of this woman, whose parentage no one knew, and whom every one had condemned. She is playing a part, they thought; she wishes to impress us with the idea that she is a persecuted martyr--a suffering angel; and she hopes thus to regain her old footing amongst us, and queen it over the whole county, as she did when that poor infatuated Sir Oswald first brought her to Raynham. This was what the county people thought; until one day the tidings flew far and wide that Lady Eversleigh had left the castle for the Continent, and that she intended to remain absent for some years. This seemed very strange; but what seemed still more strange, was the fact that the devoted mother was not accompanied by her child. The little girl, Gertrude, so named after the mother of the late baronet, remained at Raynham under the care of two persons. These two guardians were Captain Copplestone, and a widow lady of forty years of age, Mrs. Morden, a person of unblemished integrity, who had been selected as protectress and governess of the young heiress. The child was at this time two and a half years of age. Very young, she seemed, to be thus left by a mother who had appeared to idolize her. The county people shook their heads. They told each other that Lady Eversleigh was a hypocrite and an actress. She had never really loved her child--she had played the part of a sorrowing widow and a devoted mother for two years and a half, in the hope that by this means she would regain her position in society. And now, finding that this was impossible, she had all of a sudden grown tired of playing her part, and had gone off to the Continent to spend her money, and enjoy her life after her own fashion.