The old lady and the youth went out together, to where the little carriage and the grey ponies stood at the solicitor’s door. Charlie, in his present development, was not at all the man to hand a lady with a grace to her carriage; nor was this stately gentlewoman, in her brown pelisse, at all the person to be so escorted; but they were a remarkable pair enough, as they stood upon the broad pavement of one of the noblest streets of Christendom. Miss Anastasia held out her hand with a parting command and warning, as she took her seat and the reins.--“Young Atheling, remember! it is life and death!” She was less cautious at that moment than she had been during all their interview. The words full upon another ear than his to whom they were addressed. Lord Winterbourne was making his way at the moment with some newly-arrived guests of his, and under the conduct of a learned pundit from one of the colleges, along this same picturesque High Street; and, in the midst of exclamations of rapture and of interest, his suspicious and alarmed eye caught the familiar equipage and well-known figure of Miss Anastasia. Her face was turned in the opposite direction,--she did not see him,--but a single step brought him near enough to hear her words. “Young Atheling!” Lord Winterbourne had not forgotten his former connection with the name, but the remembrance had long lain dormant in a breast which was used to potent excitements. William Atheling, though he once saved a reckless young criminal, could do no harm with his remote unbelievable story to a peer of the realm,--a man who had sat in the councils of the State. Lord Winterbourne had begun his suit for the Old Wood Lodge with the most contemptuous indifference to all that could be said of him by any one of this family; yet somehow it struck him strangely to hear so sudden a naming of this name. “Young Atheling!” He could not help looking at the youth,--meeting the stormy gleam in the eyes of Charlie, whose sudden enmity sprung up anew in an instant. Lord Winterbourne was sufficiently disturbed already by the departure of Louis, and with the quick observation of alarm remarked everything. He could understand no natural connection whatever between this lad and Miss Anastasia. His startled imagination suggested instantly that it bore some reference to Louis, and what interpretation was it possible to give to so strange an adjuration--“It is life and death!” CHAPTER IV. GOING AWAY. “Charlie, my dear boy,” said Mrs Atheling, with a slight tremble in her voice, “I suppose it may be months before we see you again.” “I can’t tell, mother; but it will not be a day longer than I can help,” said Charlie, who had the grace to be serious at the moment of parting. “There’s only one thing, you know,--I must do my business before I come home.”