For a moment she held it in her hand hesitatingly. She felt that it was the only link between the present and the past. Lighting a vesta, she held the paper in the flame until it was consumed, and then she stamped her little satin-slippered foot upon the embers. The flame burnt her fingers before it went out, as if there were venom in the perjured words that the fire was consuming. But this was nothing to the fire which had seared her heart long since, burning into it those serpent words that had looked so fair only to sting the deeper. But it was over at last, and now she was Countess of Verner. “My lady” rang for her maid, and prepared to dress for the bridal journey. Whilst her robes were being removed she glanced round the room which had been furnished with so much magnificence for her reception, and then she thought, with a grateful smile, of the homage which her husband had paid her in all things. The maid being asked some simple question, told her how the health of the bridesmaids had been proposed, and how her ladyship’s handsome brother had made a beautiful speech in reply. This she thought would please her ladyship very much indeed; but it only excited uncomfortable thoughts in her ladyship’s mind--a vague kind of danger seemed to threaten her through Richard Tallant. Her ladyship asked no more questions, but went through the elaborate process of her toilette in silence, and by-and-by left the room robed in purple moire, and lace, and looking every inch a countess, to the everlasting envy of Lady Petherington and her youngest sister, and to the delight of her husband and the rest. All this time the bells at Severntown, Avonworth, and Brazencrook rung out over town and field and river. The summer air was full of their glorious old music. The ringers in their shirt sleeves pulled with a will, until the churches fairly shook again. Mighty jugs of ale passed from hand to hand, from lip to lip, in the intervals of this labour of love, and majors and triple bob-majors and all kinds of curious changes were performed on the swinging bells. Avonworth caught the faint echoes from Severntown, and Brazencrook, picking up the trembling tones from Avonworth, took them up into its own ringing measure, and carried the grand old-fashioned harmonies away down the river to distant villages, where women stood at cottage doors and listened, and men rested on their scythes to wonder why Brazencrook bells were ringing. Glorious bells, merry bells, wedding bells! Arthur Phillips sat in his studio with the windows wide open listening to the joyous music, and thinking of the peal that would soon ring out the news of another marriage. He looked away beyond the Linktown hills in the direction of London, thought of his darling Phœbe in her bridesmaid’s dress, and pictured her, in a wreath of orange blossoms at a country church, by a time-sanctified altar in Avonworth Valley.