“But the creature with this desperate person--could you not, my dear Mr. Vane, describe her--if it were only her attire?” urged Mr. Grahame. “She may be in the house,” interposed Mrs. Grahame, feeling that a deadly outrage had been committed upon the family pride. “She may be in the house,” returned Lester, with a peculiar glance directed to Helen; “all I can inform you, in reply to your question, is that her dress was of some light fabric, but as she fled past me like a phantom, I was not able to observe her sufficiently well to give a description of the lady.” “The lady, indeed!” exclaimed Mrs. Grahame, in a tone of immeasurable contempt. “To-morrow, Mr. Grahame, this strange affair must be thoroughly sifted.” “Indeed, Mrs. Grahame, it shall be,” he replied. “How widiculously womantic, Miss Gwahame,” laughed the Duke of St. Allborne, addressing Helen. Helen started as he spoke. She had listened to the sneering sarcasms of Lester, and to her mother’s expressions of withering contempt, as though she had been exposed to an atmosphere of flame, and was bound to endure its tremendous torture without one sob of pain. But, great as was her agony, her thoughts would fly away with her to him who had occasioned this scene. She was, therefore, thankful to the Duke for thus checking an absence of mind, which might have excited attention and caused remark. She replied to him with a vivacity which somewhat astonished Lester Vane, though it helped to confirm the suspicions he entertained connecting her with the interview in the thicket. She adroitly contrived to place the affair in a ridiculous light, without openly giving cause of offence to him; because, with affected sympathy, she deplored the injury he had received; but she went so far as to cause him to observe, with a sickly smile-- “Perhaps, Miss Grahame, _you_ conceive that the affair, after all, was a mere fancy, occasioned by the fatigues of my journey to-day?” “Or the stwength of our fwiend Gwahame’s fine old pawt,” exclaimed the Duke, with a loud laugh. Mr. Grahame instantly took Helen to task in so serious and so stately a manner, that Lester Vane interfered to obtain pardon for her, which was granted, at his instance, in a manner that mortified her only more bitterly than she had yet been. “I will bring him a suppliant to my feet,” she said, mentally, as her eyes, sparkling like a star, fastened upon him, “and when he is prostrate, abject, I’ll crush him remorselessly.” The next evening, Helen and Lester were walking in the garden together. She had already begun to weave her web round him, and he seemed likely to become so enmeshed as never more to escape from it. Suddenly, when near the ornamental water, he paused. He drew from his breast a small but exquisitely fine cambric handkerchief. “I beg your pardon, Miss Grahame,” he said, “if I betray any impertinent curiosity, but I am desirous of knowing whether you are acquainted with this handkerchief?”