Lady Montressor reached her chamber, which was the front room immediately over the parlor, and which she found neatly and plainly arranged, with a polished wax floor, maple furniture, and white dimity curtains, bed hangings and chair covers, and warmed by a bright little fire in the grate. The cheerful maid laid out a delicate cap and gown from her mistress’s wardrobe, and stood waiting Lady Montressor’s orders. Estelle gently declined her further attendance, and dismissed her. And then—— For the first time since her appalling calamity, Estelle found herself alone. She sank into an arm-chair, dropped her throbbing and burning forehead upon her hands, and tried to recollect herself and think coherently. For now that she was alone, the fearful events of the last twelve hours seemed the wierd and horrible conjurations of fever or nightmare. It was as difficult as it was terrible to realize her position. The first stunning shock of the storm had passed. The thunderbolt had fallen, and the charred and blackened ruins of her happiness lay all around her. The whirlwind had crossed her path of life, sweeping away her dearest treasures. The waters of affliction had rolled over her soul, bearing off her most precious earthly hopes. Yes, the first shock of the storm had passed; but desolation was within and around her, and the clouds still lowered, dark, heavy, and threatening, over her devoted head. She rapidly reviewed the chain of circumstances—when scarcely fourteen years of age, she had been ensnared by an intriguing governess, and an unprincipled fortune-hunter, into a secret marriage, soon bitterly repented by herself, and disrupted by the man’s felony, and now pronounced to have been from the beginning illegal. After ten years of separation, and two of supposed widowhood, she had that morning contracted a second marriage with a party of the highest rank and character, which was said to be legal and binding to all intents and purposes. Arrested on leaving the church, upon a grave and degrading charge, she had been discarded by her parents, who would probably leave England forever, to conceal their humiliation under foreign skies; but was protected, though most delicately, from a distance, through reverend hands, by Lord Montressor, a man of stainless honor, who would be the last on earth to sacrifice moral principle to human affection, and who had in view of the law and the testimony, declared his determination to stand by the legality of their late marriage, had given her the protection of his name and title; and exacted of all others that they should address her only by that; finally, she was bound over to appear at the approaching assizes to answer the charge of a terrible and shameful crime! Such was the past and present. What lay before her in the future? Her trial.