There was one person to whom, in any ordinary trouble of mind, Sir Oswald Eversleigh would have most certainly turned for consolation; and that person was his old and tried friend, Captain Copplestone. But the jealous doubts which racked his brain were not to be revealed, even to this faithful friend. There was bitter humiliation in the thought of opening those bleeding wounds which had so newly lacerated his heart. If Captain Copplestone had been near his friend in the hour of his trouble, he might, perhaps, have wrung the baronet's secret from him in some unguarded moment; but within the last week the Captain had been confined to his own apartments by a violent attack of gout; and except a brief daily visit of inquiry, Sir Oswald had seen nothing of him. He was very carefully tended, however, in his hours of suffering. Even her own anxiety of mind did not render Lady Eversleigh forgetful of her husband's invalid friend. Every day, and many times a day, the Captain received some new evidence of her thoughtful care. It pleased her to do this--apart from her natural inclination to be kind to the suffering and friendless; for the soldier was her husband's valued friend, and in testifying her respect for him, it seemed to her as if she were in some manner proving her devotion to the husband from whom she had become so mysteriously estranged. Amongst the many plans which had been set on foot for the amusement of the guests at Raynham, there was one on which all the visitors, male and female, had especially set their hearts. This much-talked-of entertainment was a pic-nic, to take place at a celebrated spot, whose picturesque loveliness was supposed to be unrivalled in the county, and scarcely exceeded by any scene in all the expanse of fair England. CHAPTER VIII. AFTER THE PIC-NIC. The place was called the Wizard's Cave. It was a gigantic grotto, near which flowed a waterfall of surpassing beauty. A wild extent of woodland stretched on one side of this romantic scene; on the other a broad moor spread wide before a range of hills, one of which was crowned by the ruins of an old Norman castle that had stood many a siege in days gone by.