From that Sunday to the following Wednesday, not one word was spoken of Thurston Willcoxen or his lecture. But on Wednesday morning Dr. Grimshaw entered the parlor, where Jacquelina lingered alone, gazing out of the window, and going up to her side, astonished her beyond measure by speaking in a calm, kind tone, and saying: "Jacquelina, you have been too much confined to the house lately. You are languid. You must go out more. Mr. Willcoxen lectures this evening. Perhaps you would like to hear him. If so, I withdraw my former prohibition, which was, perhaps, too harsh, and I beg you will follow your own inclinations, if they lead you to go." You should have seen Jacko's eyes and eyebrows! the former were dilated to their utmost capacity, while the latter were elevated to their highest altitude. The professor's eyebrows were knotted together, and his eyes sought the ground, as he continued: "I myself have an engagement at Leonardtown this afternoon, which will detain me all night, and therefore shall not be able to escort you; but Mrs. Waugh, who is going, will doubtless take you under her charge. Would you like to go?" "I had already intended to go," replied Jacquelina, without relaxing a muscle of her face. The professor nodded and left the room. Soon after, Jacquelina sought her aunty, whom she found in the pantry, mixing mince-meat. "I say, aunty--" "Well, Lapwing?" "When Satan turns saint, suspicion is safe, is it not?" "What do you mean, Lapwing?" "Why, just now the professor came to me, politely apologized for his late rudeness, and proposed that I should go with you to hear Mr. Willcoxen's lecture, while he, the professor, goes to Leonardtown to fulfill an engagement. I say, aunty, I sniff a plot, don't you?" "I don't know what to make of it, Lapwing. Are you going?" "Of course I am; I always intended to." No more was said at the time. Immediately after dinner Dr. Grimshaw ordered his horse, and saying that he was going to Leonardtown and should not be back till the next day, set forth. And after an early tea, Mrs. Waugh and Jacquelina set out in the family sleigh. A swift run over the hard, frozen snow brought them to Old Fields, where they stopped a moment to pick up Marian, and then shooting forward at the same rate of speed, they reached the lecture-room in full time. Jacquelina was perhaps the very least enchanted of all his hearers--she was, in fact, an exception, and found the discourse so entirely uninteresting that it was with difficulty she could refrain from yawning in the face of the orator. Mrs. Waugh also, perhaps, was but half mesmerized, for her eyes would cautiously wander from the lecturer's pulpit to the side window on her right hand. At length she stooped and whispered to Jacquelina: "Child, be cautious; Dr. Grimshaw is on the ground--I have seen his face rise up to that lower pane of glass at the corner of that window, several times. He must be crouched down on the outside."