“Dear, dear sir! you know nothing of the matter!” said the maid, rising, and shutting the door: “you don’t know what a way she has been in ever since the talk of your going--fits upon fits every night, and my lady, her mother, and I up holding her--and none in the house knowing it but ourselves. Very well at breakfast! Lord help us! sir. How little you know of what she has suffered! Lord have mercy upon me! I would not be a lady to be so much in love, and left so, for any thing in the whole world. And my Lady Sarah keeps every thing so to herself;--if it was not for these fits they would never have knowed she cared no more for you than a stone.” “And, probably you are quite mistaken,” said Vivian; “and that I have nothing to do with the young lady’s illness. If she has fits, I am very sorry for it; but I can’t possibly----Certainly, you are quite mistaken!” “Lord, sir!--mistaken! As if I could be mistaken, when I know my lady as well as I know myself! Why, sir, I know from the time of the election, when you was given to her by all the country--and to be sure when we all thought it would be a match directly--and the Lord knows what put it off!--I say, from that time, her heart was set upon you. Though she never said a word to me, or any one, I knew how it was, through all her coldness--And to be sure, when you was in Lon’on so much with us, all the town said, as all the country did afore, that to be sure it was to be a match--But then that sad affair, with that artfullest of women, that took you off from all that was good, and away, the Lord knows where, to foreign parts!--Well! to be sure, I never shall forget the day you come back again to us!--and the night of the ball!--and you dancing with my lady, and all so happy; then, to be sure, all were sarten it was to be immediately----And now to go and break my poor lady’s heart at the last--Oh, sir, sir! if you could but see her, it would touch a heart of marble!” Vivian’s astonishment and dismay were so great, that he suffered the girl, who was an unpractised creature, to go on speaking without interruption: the warmth of affection with which she spoke of her lady, also, surprised him: for, till this instant, he had no idea that any one could love Lady Sarah Lidhurst; and the accounts she gave of the lady’s sufferings not only touched his compassion, but worked upon his vanity. “This cold, proud young lady that never loved none before, to think,” as her maid said, “that she should come to such a pass, as to be in fits about him. And it was her belief that Lady Sarah never would recover it, if he went away out of the castle this day.” The ringing of a bell had repeatedly been heard, whilst Lady Sarah’s maid was speaking; it now rang violently, and her name was called vehemently from the adjoining apartment. “I must go, I _must_ go!--Oh, sir! one day, for mercy’s sake! stay one day longer!”