Dakin stared, with a striking absence of sympathy. She was wondering what a fine, handsome young fellow like Stephen could see in the pallid, watery-eyed, flabby-looking young woman before her. Only Stella, as she reclined on a sofa in the bedroom, to all appearance absorbed in listlessly turning over the pages of a novel, could guess at anything between the lines of Stephen Lee’s compliment. That Stephen should dare to lift his eyes as high as her, his master’s daughter, had not entered her mind. But she knew now that he was a gypsy of the same wild, untamed race as herself, and she guessed that his motive for entering the servants’ hall that night was to bring some message from old Sarah, and that his unwonted gallantry toward the far from comely Ellen was a trick to cover some scheme of his for the future. It was therefore not without prescience of what might be in store for her that Stella watched the tray which was placed on a little table near her couch. She fully expected, indeed, that a communication of some kind would be lurking among the articles upon it, and when, presently, waiting her opportunity until Ellen, under pretence of rearranging the ornaments on the mantelpiece, became absorbed in the reflection of her own plain features in the looking-glass, she began to closely examine the contents of the supper-tray, the result was that her fingers speedily closed on Sarah’s message. Slipping it into the open pages of her book, with her heart beating high with excitement, Stella read the pencilled words with eager eyes. Not for one moment did she doubt the gypsy’s power to help her. “Your mother’s friends watch over you, and soon you will be free.” The words came as light in the darkness to the girl, drooping under the forced confinement to the house, and the detestable system of _espionage_ by which she was never for one moment free from Dakin’s or Ellen’s prying eyes. It was true that when she thought of Lord Carthew, and recalled his sympathetic talk on the morning when he had compared her to the “Lady of Shalott,” and the charm of his manner toward the late Lady Cranstoun, she was not so unjust or so prejudiced as to believe that he was a party to the system which was depriving her of her liberty and breaking down her health in order to force her into an uncongenial marriage. She believed, on the contrary, that could she only obtain an hour’s uninterrupted talk with the young Viscount, he would be the first to condemn her father’s drastic treatment and to yield his claim to her hand when she informed him that she was passionately in love with another man. She knew all this, but knew, too, that Sir Philip would never allow a meeting between her and Lord Carthew, whose town address she did not even know. Grief for Lady Cranstoun’s death, desperate anxiety as to her own future, a perpetual longing to see Hilary again and to be assured of his love and faithfulness, the impossibility of even communicating with him, the misery of her