"Do you know I have an uneasiness about these ladies in Lonsdale?" she said; "I know nothing whatever about them--not so much as their names; but you are their natural protector; and it does not do for women to be as magnanimous and generous in the reception of strangers as you are. There! don't be alarmed. I told you I knew nothing. They may be as safe, and as middle-aged, and as ugly as I am; instead of a guileless widow and a pretty little girl, they may be hardened old campaigners like myself; but they come into my mind, I cannot tell why. Have them here to live beside you, and they will do you good." "My sister is about to be married," said Vincent, more and more surprised, and looking very sharply into her face in the lamplight, to see whether she really did not know anything more than she said. A certain expression of relief came over her face. "Then all is well," she said, with strange cordiality, and again held out her hand to him. Then they parted, and pursued their several ways through the perfectly silent and dimly-lighted streets. Vincent walked home with the most singular agitation in his mind. Whether to give any weight to such vague but alarming suggestions--whether to act immediately upon the indefinite terror thus insinuated into his thoughts--or to write, and wait till he heard whether any real danger existed--or to cast it from him altogether as a fantastic trick of imagination, he could not tell. Eventful and exciting as the evening had been, he postponed the other matters to this. If any danger threatened Susan, his simple mother could suffer with her, but was ill qualified to protect her: but what danger could threaten Susan? He consoled himself with the thought that these were not the days of abductions or violent love-making. To think of an innocent English girl in her mother's house as threatened with mysterious danger, such as might have surrounded a heroine of the last century, was impossible. If there are Squire Thornhills nowadays, their operations are of a different character. Walking rapidly home, with now and then a blast of chill rain in his face, and the lamplight gleaming in the wet streets, Vincent found less and less reason for attaching any importance to Mrs. Hilyard's hints and alarms. It was the sentiment of the night, and her own thoughts, which had suggested such fears to her mind--a mind evidently experienced in paths more crooked than any which Vincent himself, much less simple Susan, had ever known. When he reached home, he found his little fire burning brightly, his room arranged with careful nicety, which was his landlady's appropriate and sensible manner of showing her appreciation of the night's lecture, and her devotion to the minister; and, lastly, on the table a letter from that little house in Lonsdale, round which such fanciful fears had gathered. Never was there a letter which breathed more of the peaceful security and tranquillity of home. Mrs.