"No," said Sally, with trembling fingers on the silk. "How beautiful she will look in it!" In a corner of the trunk was a small box made of cedar wood. Opening it, Seth took out various articles of jewelry, and gazed at them with sad eyes. "These should be the belongings of a lady, Sally. Our girl is being prepared for the change. Is it to be one of joy or sorrow?" At the bottom of the cedar-wood box was a small packet of letters addressed to the Duchess. Seth hesitated. The receipt of these letters had been hidden from him. They were addressed to the Duchess at a post-office a mile distant from Rosemary Lane. He debated within himself whether he had a right to read them. "If I were her father," he thought, "the right would be clearly mine. As it is, the right is mine. I am her guardian and protector." He read them in silence; they were love letters, expressing the most passionate adoration for the Duchess, and filled with vows and promises enough to distract the mind of any girl in her position. Apart from the expressions of love they contained, there were other disturbing elements--such as the circumstance of the letters being written on paper bearing a crest with Latin words around it. Sally followed Seth's movements with wistful eagerness, but he did not enlighten her as to the contents of the letters. He returned them and the trinkets to the scented box, and replaced in the trunk with studied care all the articles he had taken from it. Then he locked and carried the trunk to the corner of the cellar again. "It may be," he said, after a short contemplative pause, "that our Duchess has really attracted the love of a gentleman. Such things have occurred, produced by faces and figures less beautiful than those of our Duchess." "Then the change will be one of joy!" cried Sally, with a brighter look. "You know what that means, Sally. It means separation from us. You have a good memory, my girl?" "Oh, yes." "Carry your mind back to the holiday we had in the country. Do you think you can recall all that occurred in those few happy days?" "Shall I try?" "Yes--just run them over." "Our packing up the night before; getting up early in the morning and meeting the wagon; trotting out of the dull streets into the beautiful country--I can hear the jingle of the bells on the horses' necks--the gardens, the lanes, the lovely flowers, and the waving corn; the names of the horses, Daisy and Cornflower--is that right, Daddy?" "Go on, Sally. You have a capital memory." "Our stopping at the public-house, and having dinner in the garden; our getting into the wagon again, with a lot of fresh hay to sit on; our trotting on and on till we came to another public-house, called The World's End--I thought it a strange name, and that we were really getting to the end of the world----" "One moment, Sally. Before we came to The World's End, we saw a great park with splendid iron gates at the entrance. I asked what place it was----"