"No; my husband. You must look _everywhere_, Mr. Strange. If those letters are in existence, I must have them. You will look?" "Certainly I will." "I shall remain in town until I hear from you. You _will_ go, then!" "One more question ere I do go, Lady Clavering. Have you positively no recollection of seeing this lost parchment?" She looked surprised at my pertinacity. "If I had, I should say so. I do not think I saw anything of the sort. But if I had seen it, the subsequent fright would have taken it clean out of my memory." So I wished her good-morning and departed. "It is not Lady Clavering," I exclaimed to Lennard, when I reached home. "Are you sure of that, Mr. Strange?" "I think so. I judge by her manner: it is only consistent with perfect innocence. In truth, Lennard, I begin to see that I was foolish to have doubted her at all, the circumstances surrounding it are so intensely improbable." And yet, even while I spoke, something of the suspicion crept into my mind again. So prone to inconsistency is the human heart. CHAPTER VII. ANNABEL. Most men have their romance in life sooner or later. Mine had come in due course, and she who made it for me was Annabel Brightman. After my first meeting with her, when she was a child of fourteen, and I not much more than a lad of twenty, I had continued to see her from time to time, for Mr. Brightman's first invitation to me was only the prelude to others. I watched her grow up into a good, unaffected woman, lovable and charming as she was when a child. Childhood had passed away now, and thought and gentleness had taken its place; and to my eyes and my heart no other girl in the world could compare with Annabel Brightman. Her father suspected it. Had he lived only a little longer, he would have learned it beyond doubt, for I should have spoken out more fully upon the matter. A little less than a year before his death--it was on a Good Friday--I was spending the day at his house, and was in the garden with Annabel. She had taken my arm, and we were pacing the broad walk to the left of the lawn, thinking only of ourselves, when, raising my eyes, I saw Mr. Brightman looking attentively at us from one of the French windows. He beckoned to me, and I went in. "Charles," said he, when I had stepped inside, "no _nonsense_. You and Annabel are too young for anything of that sort." I felt that his eyes were full upon me as I stood before him, and my face flushed to the roots of my hair. But I took courage to ask a question. "Sir, every year passing over our heads will lessen that objection. Would there be any other?" "Be quiet, Charles. Time enough to talk of these things when the years shall have passed. You are too young for them, I say." "I am twenty-five, sir; and Miss Brightman----"