With talks like these it may be supposed that Adelaide Codling, apt pupil as she was, soon came to look upon a secret marriage as just the one thing desirable and necessary to secure her happiness; and, from this conclusion, it was but a step to destruction. Probably enough Captain Wiseman had never any intention of marrying the girl, but whether or not, he certainly had abandoned it, when, after a few weeks of secret meetings and clandestine letter writing, he succeeded in persuading her to join him in London. She left home just after Christmas, in secret to all appearance, though the village gossips would have it that her mother knew of her flight beforehand, and nobody doubted that she had run away after the Captain. In vain did Mrs. Codling give out that her daughter had been called away suddenly to visit a sick aunt. Nobody believed her. Secret intrigues cannot be successfully carried out in a quiet country village, and what was declared to be the true version of the flight was current in all the country side within a week of Adelaide's departure. CHAPTER XV. IS TOO BAD FOR DESCRIPTION. Unthinkingly, Mrs. Robins repeated this story to Mrs. Wanless one day in Sally's hearing, and immediately repented of her folly, for Sally uttered a low moan and fainted. From that day the gloom of her life seemed deeper. With unceasing tenderness and watchfulness her parents had sought to bring back hope to their lost one's heart, and until this ugly bit of gossip reached her they had hopes of succeeding. Sally had began to talk a little more freely, and, recognising the burden she was to her parents, was becoming anxious to get a situation of some kind--provided always that it might be far away, where no one would know her. But from the time she came back to consciousness on this unhappy day, darkness again settled down on her spirit. She sat apart brooding, as when first her babe lay on her lap. That babe itself appeared to grow almost hateful in her sight, and was left to the care of her mother, weary though the old woman was with work and sorrow. With mouth hard set and eyes looking wistfully sometimes, as if in terror, into a world far away from the home nest, Sally heeded no one. Her father again grew deeply concerned about her, and tried casually to draw her out of the trance that seemed to chain her soul. It was useless. She answered him in monosyllables or never at all. At times too, and when he spoke to her, a strange, resolute look would gather on her face. It was not exactly obstinacy, though she certainly was unyielding. Rather was it a look as of one who had made up her mind to a great sacrifice, and feared that she might be betrayed into abandoning a duty. At that look her father always somehow grew afraid. It was evident to him that his daughter in some way connected Adelaide Codling's flight with her own life, but how he could not guess.