of Miles Challoner's warm admiration and generous regard had not grown and deepened into a feeling, the strength of which forbade her striving against it, and which she knew and confessed to herself to be love, she would have rebelled against any attempt to hoodwink or deceive that loyal-hearted gentleman. But now the attempt had been treachery of the basest kind. She loved him--loved him wildly, passionately, and yet with an intermingled reverence and respect such as her girlish fancy had never dreamed of; and she had refused him, had told him--not indeed calmly or quietly, for once her self-control had failed her, but with earnestness and decision--that her fate was decided, her way of life quite fixed, and that she could never be his wife! Ah, if they could have known all, those good people downstairs, they would scarcely have wondered at Miss Lambert's indisposition. They ascribed her illness to over-exertion, over-excitement, the reaction after the feverish professional life of the past few months. A little rest, they said to each other, would "bring her round." A little rest! Something more than a little rest is required, as they would have allowed, could they have seen what no one, not even Mrs. Bloxam, saw,--the favourite of the public with dishevelled hair and streaming eyes stretched prone upon her pillow, and sobbing as though her heart would break! Miss Grace Lambert's illness or indisposition, thus evoking the compassion of the company staying at Hardriggs, was, whatever the company might have thought about it, known to herself to spring purely from mental distress. The same _teterrima causa_ acted on Lord Sandilands, but brought about a different physical result. On the morning after Miles had communicated the result of his interview with Gertrude the old nobleman awoke with a return of the symptoms which had previously alarmed him so much increased that he felt it necessary to send for a local practitioner, by whose report he would be guided as to the expediency of summoning his own ordinary physician from London.