But anybody will perceive at a glance that after this I was more completely bewildered than ever, and could not undertake to say to my own mind, far less to anybody else, whether there was or was not any real reason for Sarah’s nervousness, or whether she had actually any sort of connection with this young Italian. Sometimes I made myself miserable with the idea that the whole matter looked like an insane fancy. People when they are going mad, as I have heard, always take up the idea that they are persecuted or wronged somehow. What if Sarah’s mind was tottering, and happening to catch sight of this young man, quite a stranger, and very likely to catch her eye, her fancy took hold of him as the person that was scheming against her? The more I thought over this, the more feasible it looked; though it was a dreadful thing to think that one’s only sister was failing in her reason, and that any night the companion of my life might be a maniac. But what was I to think? How was it possible, no madness being in the case, that a young unknown stranger could threaten the fortune and honour of Sarah Mortimer, born heiress of the Park, and in lawful possession of it for more than a dozen years? What possible reason could there be for her, if she was in her sane senses, fearing the intrigues of anybody, much less a harmless young foreigner? But then that groan! was it a disturbed mind that drew that involuntary utterance out of her? Heaven help us! What could any one think or do in such circumstances? I was no more able to write a note to Mr. Luigi that evening than I was to have gone out and sought him. Things must take their chance. If he came he must come. I could not help myself. Besides, I had no thought for Mr. Luigi and his lost Countess. I could think only of my sister. No! no! little Sara was deceived, clever as she was. Sarah knew no Countess Sermoneta--her mind disturbed and unsettled, had fixed upon the strange face on the way, only as some fanciful instrument of evil to herself. CHAPTER VII. Next morning at breakfast I found a letter waiting me, in an unknown hand--an odd hand, not inelegant, but which somehow gave a kind of foreign look even to the honest English superscription. The address was odd, too. It was Miss _Milla_ Mortimer, a very extraordinary sort of title for me, Millicent. That is the work of diminutives--they are apt to get misunderstood and metamorphosed into caricatures of names. The letter inside was of a sufficiently odd description to correspond with the address; this is how it was expressed:-- “MADAME,