‘As if I _could_ forget,’ replied the girl reproachfully, as she raised her face for her lover’s embrace, and, with his assistance, re-entered the picture gallery, and walked slowly back to the ballroom, to tell her mother she had such a terrible fit of neuralgia, she would rather return home at once. Mr and Mrs Hindes, who were seated near Mrs Crampton, were all solicitude for her assumed indisposition, and Mr Hindes suggested taking her for a turn in the fresh air to see if the change from the heated ballroom would relieve her. Mrs Hindes, a tall, slight woman, with dark eyes and hair, and a graceful figure, who was really attached to Jenny, inquired with whom she had been dancing the last set, as she had looked for her in vain. ‘I have not been dancing at all,’ replied Jenny, boldly; ‘I have been sitting in the picture gallery with Lord Craven, but my head gets worse instead of better. Come along, mother, the carriage must be waiting for us by this time, and I am tired to death. I want to get to bed.’ ‘Certainly, my love,’ replied Mrs Crampton, with her usual lamb-like acquiescence to all her daughter’s demands; ‘perhaps Mr Hindes will be good enough to see us to the carriage.’ And Henry Hindes, who was convinced that Miss Crampton’s neuralgia was due to Mr Walcheren’s defalcation, smiled inwardly, and conducted the ladies to their barouche, with much satisfaction that he had conducted the business he had taken on himself so successfully. When Jenny Crampton reached home and found herself in the seclusion of her bedroom, she did not give way to any access of nervous agitation, or feel any trepidation at the thoughts of the important step which she had taken on herself. That might be all very well for a damsel of romance of a hundred years ago, but it is not the way the young women of the present day manage their affairs. They are too strong-minded, to cry and shake and faint over the deeds they have put their sign and seal to. Jenny had made an appeal to become the wife of Mr Walcheren in a fair way, and her request had been denied her, for what she considered a frivolous objection. She knew there was no chance of altering her father’s decision, and having always been given her own way since a child, she determined to take it now. She regretted having to be married privately, but she saw no wrong in it. Her parents might be sorry when they heard of it, but they had brought it on themselves. She was not going to keep Frederick waiting for an indefinite period, and perhaps lose him altogether, because her father did not like Roman Catholics as well as he did Protestants. _She_ didn’t object to his religion, and she was the principal party concerned, so the young lady looked out the dresses she wished to take with her, and made her maid Ellen pack them in the box to take to the dressmaker’s, and, when the key was in her own hands, she unlocked it again and added the articles