Josephine was bitterly disappointed and chagrined, for she was as yet in total ignorance as to the cause of his departure, and Mrs. Richards for the moment was rendered speechless from indignation. She had not once thought that he would go away before the expiration of his week. “We shall see you again, I trust, before you leave America,” Josephine said, with her sweetest smile, as he took her hand at parting. “Perhaps so; I cannot tell,” he answered, absently. “We return to Brooklyn next week,” Mrs. Richards now managed to say. “If you are in New York, you surely will find time to run over and call upon us now and then.” “Thank you. I may be able to do so,” he replied, courteously; and then, with a somewhat formal bow, he went away to seek for his lost love. “What under the sun is the matter with Lord Carrol this morning, mamma? He does not appear like himself at all; and what has possessed him to go away so soon?” Josephine cried, nearly ready to weep as the door closed upon the man she loved, and she was left alone with her mother. Mrs. Richards then related what she had overheard the previous evening, and told her also of her subsequent interview with Star and Mr. Rosevelt, and the news that had come to them that morning of their flight. Josephine listened to her in dumb amazement, hardly able to comprehend the romantic story. “That girl has done nothing but set everybody by the ears ever since she entered this house,” she burst forth, at length, quivering in every nerve with anger. “Lord Carrol in love with _her_! I cannot comprehend it, and I think it is scandalous for him to confess it, after the marked attention that he paid me at Long Branch.” “I think so, too,” Mrs. Richards echoed, but rather faintly, for she knew how Josephine had almost been thrown at him, so to speak. “Well, I am glad she is gone,” the excited girl continued. “I hope now that we shall be able to take some comfort. She bewitched papa with her pretty face, her music, and pretended love of study. She was an artful thing, making herself so conspicuous at school that even the newspapers took it up, and was so puffed up on account of it that her airs were insufferable. It is a mercy that Uncle Jacob lost his fortune before he came to us, or she would have been likely to wheedle him out of it.” “She has been as sly as a fox,” commented Mrs. Richards, wrathfully, her ire against poor, unoffending Star waxing hotter and hotter, for she was as bitterly disappointed to lose his lordship as a son-in-law as Josephine was to lose him as a husband. “I never heard anything like it. To think of his being engaged to her, and we never suspecting such a thing! I’ll bet,” the refined young lady continued, as a bright idea struck her, “that she went away to meet him last Saturday, and that was why she was rigged out so. That must be the secret of her insolence to me. She knew she was soon to become Lady Carrol, and she was trying how it would seem to lord it over me.”