After Mr. Hodgson was gone, Miss Brancker did not fail to call to mind that he had never once made the slightest allusion to John's imprisonment and trial; and, furthermore, that the name of Hazeldine had seemed to awake no echo in his memory of the dread tragedy with which it had been associated so short a time before. Was his silence due to the fact that the annals of crime possessed no interest for him, and that he shunned the reading of them; or was it simply the result of a failure of memory? Of course, another theory was possible--that he had read and recollected everything bearing on the murder and trial, and that he was silent about them of set purpose. In any case, it was open to Miss Brancker to adopt which of the three theories might seem most feasible to her. Four days later the afternoon post brought Miss Brancker a letter from Mr. Hodgson, in which she was informed that the engagement between Miss Rivers and Mr. Clement Hazeldine must at once be broken off, the young lady's friends having other views and intentions with regard to her future, which would be made known at the proper time. The writer, it was added, would feel obliged by an immediate reply assuring him that the instructions conveyed in his communication had been duly carried out. Aunt Charlotte gave the letter to Hermia to read, and she, as a matter of course, passed it on to her lover, when he arrived at the Cottage the same evening. Then Aunt Charlotte left them alone for half an hour in order to afford them an opportunity of discussing the letter by themselves. When she re-entered the room, Hermia said at once, "We utterly decline, Clement and I, to have our destinies ruled and controlled by an unknown autocrat, who, for anything we know to the contrary, may have no legal or moral right whatever to interpose between us. For my own part--and I want you to tell Mr. Hodgson so--I altogether refuse to consider the question in any way until I know clearly for whom he is acting, and the relationship which exists between the person or persons in question and myself. Until I am enlightened on those points, matters between myself and Clement will remain on precisely the same footing that they are on now." Then, after a momentary pause, she added, with a heightened color, and a smile directed at her lover: "Not that it will make the slightest difference even if Mr. Hodgson chooses to tell me all there is to tell. I shall be of age in a few months, and my own mistress. The day has gone by for either Mr. Hodgson, or those who hide themselves behind him, to interfere with my destiny in any way." She spoke with the happy confidence of her sex and age. Experience had not yet taught her that the threads which unite us to our fellows, although to all seeming as fine as those of a spider's web, may, any one of them, prove strong enough to bind us round and round like so many helpless flies, and with just as little possibility of escape.