Sitting in melancholy solitude by the drawing-room fire, on this grey, rainy morning, Suzette was glad to remember that she had prevented the sending out of invitation cards, and that very few people in Matcham knew the intended date of that wedding which was never to be. There were not many to think of her with especial pity on this particular day, sitting alone in her desolation, in her dark serge frock, with the black poodle, Caro, and her piano for her only companions. Even the companionship of that beloved piano had failed her since Geoffrey's disappearance. Music was too closely associated with his presence. There was not a single composition in her portfolio that did not recall him--not an air she played that did not bring back the words he had spoken when last her fingers followed the caprices of the composer. He had been her master as well as her lover--he had taught her the subtleties of musical expression--had breathed mind into her music. Bessie Edgefield knew the date; but Bessie was sympathetic, and never officious or obtrusive. She would drop in by-and-by, no doubt, pretending not to remember anything particular about the day. She would be full of some little bit of village news, or a new book from Mudie's, or Mrs. Roebuck's last bonnet. The wedding was to have been at two o'clock, a sensible, comfortable hour; giving the bride ample leisure in which to put on her wedding finery. The hours between breakfast and luncheon seemed longer than usual that morning, a long blank weariness, after Suzette had seen her father mount and ride away on his favourite hunter. The hounds met on the other side of the downs, on the borders of Hampshire. It would be late, most likely, before she would welcome that kind father to the comfortable fireside, and listen, or at least pretend to listen, to the varying fortunes of an adventurous day. And in the meantime she had the day all before her, to dispose of as best she might, that day which was to have seen her a bride. Was she sorrowing for the lover who had forsaken her, as she sat looking with sad, tearless eyes into the fire? Was she regretting the happiness that might have been, thinking of a life which should have been cloudless? No, she had never contemplated a life of cloudless happiness with Geoffrey Wornock. She had loved that fiery spirit. Her love had been conquered by a mind stronger than her own, and she had submitted, almost as a slave submits to her captor. Mentally she had been in bondage, able to see all that was faulty and perilous in the character of her conqueror, yet loving him in spite of his faults. But to-day his image was associated with a great terror--a terror of undiscovered crime--the fear that when next she heard his name spoken she would hear of him as an arrested criminal; or as a suicide, self-slaughtered in some quiet spot, where the searchers must needs be slow to find him.