On discovering her loss Hetty had at once leaped to the very natural conclusion that her whilom lover had deserted her, and repossessed himself of his letters in consequence of his having forsaken her for someone else. The question that at once put itself to her was, as to the means by which it would be possible to find out who that someone was. Jealousy, and a determination to be revenged on her perfidious lover, worked very powerfully within her. She was by no means the kind of young woman to sit down helplessly under so foul a wrong and content herself with bemoaning her fate and shedding an infinitude of tears. She had really loved Keymer, and the blow he had aimed at her was such as she could neither forgive nor forget, and not till she should have succeeded in returning it with interest would she rest satisfied. Her first step, despite her mother’s protests, was to quit Dulminster and take lodgings in St. Oswyth’s in a back street within a stone’s throw of Keymer’s home. She was not long ascertaining that Launce had left the town only a couple of days after his theft of the letters, but that no one, unless it were his father, knew either where he had gone, or the business which had taken him away. Neither did all Hetty’s inquiries, perseveringly as she conducted them, tend to enlighten her on the one point about which she was more anxious than any other. If Launce were engaged to any young lady at St. Oswyth’s, no one there seemed to know of it. That at various times he had flirted more or less desperately with half a score of damsels was not open to dispute; but there matters had ended, and not even the whisper of an engagement reached Hetty from anywhere. In such a state of affairs it was only natural that she should ask herself whether Keymer, unknown to his friends and acquaintances, might not have left home on purpose to marry someone at a distance, and might not, at that very time, be on his bridal tour. It was a tormenting thought, and one of which Hetty could by no means disabuse her mind. Anyone less persevering or less determined to leave no stone unturned in the task she had set herself would have gone back home disheartened, and have done her utmost to forget that anyone so unspeakably mean as Launce Keymer had proved himself to be should ever have beguiled her into loving him. But Miss Hetty was made of different stuff. She knew that Keymer could not stay away for ever. It might be months, perhaps even a year, before he returned. But that he would return she felt little doubt, and should he then bring with him a wife—well, in that case, let him look to himself! Meanwhile she would stay on where she was.