The plan decided upon was that Gertrude and Mrs. Bloxam should return on that evening to Hardriggs, and terminate their stay there as soon as possible; and then go to London and occupy the interval which must elapse before Lord Sandilands could travel, in making preparations for departure. The pretty villa was to be given up; the household gods which Gertrude had gathered around her were to be dispersed, and her life was "to begin over again." Is there any drearier phrase than that? can words represent any harder fact, any more painful idea? Then Lord Sandilands and his daughter would go abroad, and leave the English world behind them, to think and say just what it might please. The place of their abode was not even discussed. All foreign countries were alike new to Gertrude, and old to Lord Sandilands. One little point of detail had been mentioned between them. If Gertrude wished it, her father would take Mrs. Bloxam with them. He inclined to the belief that it would be butter not; better to be away from everyone connected with the past, from which it was their wish, their object to escape. And his daughter agreed with him, as did Mrs. Bloxam, when the matter was mentioned to her. She hated foreign countries--her trip to Italy was a standing grievance--and she was very glad to retire from her post of chaperone to Miss Lambert, with such a handsome present in money from Lord Sandilands--an ill-deserved acknowledgment of her services--as, added to the savings she had accumulated at the Vale House, rendered her free from the presence or the apprehension of poverty. When the time of parting came, this lady, on the whole a not unfortunate member of society as human affairs are constituted, took leave of Lord Sandilands and his daughter with the utmost propriety; and it is more than probable that by this time she has ceased to remember their existence. Gertrude took leave of her father, when the appointed time came for her return to Hardriggs, with little visible emotion. She was dazed and exhausted; and it was not until the events of the last few days were weeks old, and she passed them in review under a foreign sky, in a distant land, far away from the man she loved and the man she bated, that she began to realise them in detail, and to feel that she had, indeed, "begun life over again." When Lord Sandilands contemplated the prospect of the interview he was about to have with Miles Challoner, he shrunk from it with dread. But he had to go through with it; and perhaps the most painful moment of the many painful hours he and his friend passed together was that in which the young man advanced to him with beaming looks, with outstretched hand, with agitated voice, and said, "You have sent for me? you have good news for me?"