“I _must_ go,” Ernest resumed: “Emily, dear Emily! goodbye;--God bless you!” He took her soft, warm little hand in his own; she allowed him to retain it unresistingly: he pressed it, and his heart beat quickly when he felt the pressure faintly but unmistakably returned. With a sudden impulse he raised the little hand, still imprisoned in his, to his lips, kissed it, and tore himself away. As he paused to close the door, a slight sound caught his ear: could it be a sob? How long it might have been after his departure ere the noise of approaching voices roused Emily from the mental abstraction into which she had fallen, that young lady herself never knew--it might have been one minute, it might have been ten. When she did awake to a sense of outward things, the following speech from the lips of Mrs. Selby, a good-natured, vulgar woman, arrested her attention:-- “And so, ma’am, if Sir Thomas Crawley dies, which my husband fears is only too probable, Mr. Carrington is as likely to be his heir as anybody I can think of.” “And then he’ll go and marry that pert stuck-up Emily Colville, I suppose” (the speaker was Mrs. Pillanbill, who owned three awful daughters, unattached); “that girl’s played her cards well, and no mistake. It was easy to see she set her cap at him from the first--probably calculated on his being Sir Thomas’s heir all along. Oh, she’s a deep one, trust her!” And as the speakers passed on, their words became inaudible in the distance; but Emily had heard too much for her peace of mind. All night long she lay awake weeping--for she resolved, if Ernest should be Sir Thomas’s heir, and asked her to become his wife, she must and would refuse him, if the resolution broke her heart. Oh, Rosebud! Rosebud! beware of pride--the sin that peopled hell! CHAPTER XV.--SETTLES THREE OF THE DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.