Bessy Godolphin was away from home that week. She had gone to spend it with some friends at a few miles' distance. Cecil was alone when Janet returned to the drawing-room. She had no suspicion of the sorrow that was overhanging the house. She had not seen Thomas go to the Folly, and felt surprised at his tardiness. "How late he will be, Janet!" "Who? Thomas! He is not going. He is not very well this evening," was the reply. Cecil thought nothing of it. How should she? Janet buried her fears within her, and said no more. One was to dine at Lady Godolphin's Folly that night, who absorbed all Cecil's thoughts. Cecil Godolphin had had her romance in life; as so many have it. It had been partially played out years ago. Not quite. Its sequel had still to come. She sat there listlessly; her pretty hands resting inertly on her knee, her beautiful face tinged with the setting sunlight; sat there thinking of him--Lord Averil. A romance it had really been. Cecil Godolphin had paid a long visit to the Honourable Mrs. Averil, some three or four years ago. She, Mrs. Averil, was in health then, fond of gaiety, and her house had many visitors. Amidst others, staying there, was Lord Averil: and before he and Cecil knew well what they were about, they had learned to love each other. Lord Averil was the first to awake from the pleasant dream: to know what it meant; and he discreetly withdrew himself out of harm's way. Harm only to himself, as he supposed: he never suspected that the same love had won its way to Cecil Godolphin. A strictly honourable man, he would have been ready to kill himself in self-condemnation had he suspected that it had. Not until he had gone, did it come out to Cecil that he was a married man. When only eighteen years of age he had been drawn into one of those unequal and unhappy alliances that can only bring a flush to the brow in after-years. Many a hundred times had it dyed that of Lord Averil. Before he was twenty years of age, he had separated from his wife; when pretty Cecil was yet a child: and the next ten years he had spent abroad, striving to outlive its remembrance. His own family, you may be sure, did not pain him by alluding to it, then, or after his return. He had no residence now in the neighbourhood of Prior's Ash: he had sold it years ago. When he visited the spot, it was chiefly as the guest of Colonel Max, the master of the fox-hounds: and in that way he had made the acquaintance of Charlotte Pain. Thus it happened, when Cecil met him at Mrs. Averil's, that she knew nothing of his being a married man. On Mrs. Averil's part, she never supposed that Cecil did not know it. Lord Averil supposed she knew it: and little enough in his own eyes has he looked in her presence, when the thought would flash over him, "How she must despise me for my mad folly!" He had learned to love her; to love her passionately: never so much as glancing at the thought that it could be reciprocated. He, a married man! But