We leave the Countess of Verner amidst the splendid pleasures of the London season, and, with the hope that an occasional expression of weariness which shadows those brilliant eyes may indicate a surfeit of pleasure, rather than any lack of real happiness, we turn to that great flat country of Lincolnshire with its green fields of wheat, its long dreamy-looking river, and its rich pastures. We stop at Oldhall Farm, and there, with the windows wide open, we find Luke Somerton telling some neighbours, who have come in to tea, all about that model farm in Severnshire. He never wearies of talking about those wonderful cow-sheds and stables and granaries, and the new yard that is hemmed in with buildings such as those which he is erecting at Oldhall. Mrs. Somerton, with a watchful look in her eyes, sits by plying her needle, and now and then a telling proverb falls from her lips. She has not quite got over that sarcastic disappointed manner which characterised her conversation years ago, but she is quieter now and more subdued; any one can see that she has had her troubles, but she is not an unhappy woman nevertheless. Some people would call her a very happy woman; but these knew nothing of that confession made to the master of Barton Hall in those past days of her life in the Vale of Avonworth; otherwise they would have seen cause to rejoice over certain occasional letters from Paul Somerton, and sundry sweet little notes from Mrs. Arthur Phillips, which cheered the latter days of the ambitious Lincolnshire woman. The letters of Paul Somerton reveal many circumstances of interest to the readers of these pages. We gather from them, and the batch of Cape newspapers which accompanies each epistle, that the Lieutenant soon ceased to nourish his unholy attachment for the siren who, for a time, had held him in adamantine chains. There are fevers of passion which in the young heart soon burn out and leave nothing behind but a vague and harmless memory, without one pang of sorrow or regret. Happily for Paul Somerton, his wild and wretched passion for that poor abandoned dupe of Shuffleton Gibbs partook of this fiery yet transient character. When his better nature had time to assert itself, and the temptress was no longer in his sight, her image gradually faded out, to be replaced by one worthy in every way to be treasured in the heart, of an honest and honourable man.