cared for, was he worth thinking of? She had gone and married Henry Rich when Ben was poor. And now that the man whose name she bore had opportunely vanished from her path, she had returned now Ben was about to regain his fortune, to lie in wait for him, with a miserable pretence of old friendship and tender regard for his cousin, who was to be the victim, and scapegoat, and sacrifice for all! Perhaps it was not much wonder that Mary was bitter. And she had all a woman’s natural distrust in the man’s powers of resistance. It never occurred to her that the syren of his youth might now have no attraction for him. ‘They are like that,’ she said to herself, with a true woman’s feeling of half-impatient tolerance, and pity, and something like contempt,--not blame, as if he were a free agent. It was not he, but she, upon whom it was natural to lay the blame. CHAPTER VII. THE DOVE. About a week after the arrival of the visitors from The Willows, an arrival of a very different kind happened at Renton;--and yet it could not be called an arrival. There had been no further news, and the Manor was still in the same state of pleasant confusion and preparation,--the maids sitting and chatting over their work in the west wing, and a roomful of seamstresses working at the new carpets and curtains for ‘the boys’ rooms,’--when one morning Mary was mysteriously called out from Mrs. Renton’s room, where she was reading the newspaper, her usual morning occupation. ‘It was a lady who wanted to see her,’ the maid said; and was stolid, and refused all further particulars. ‘A lady,--any one who has been here lately?’ Mary asked, stiffening into sudden offence. It could be nobody but Millicent, she thought, though Millicent had been at the house repeatedly since her first visit, and was already known. ‘I never saw her before, miss,--not at Renton,’ was the reply; and Mary, annoyed, went to see for herself who the unknown visitor was. She had been set on edge by the events of the last few days. ‘Wheresoever the carrion is, there will the eagles be gathered together,’ she said to herself, with a kind of spiteful misery. So long as nothing was going to happen in the family, no mysterious visitors, neither men nor women, came near Renton; and now here was the second in a week! Perhaps some other syren to put herself in Ben’s way; perhaps somebody who possessed Laurie’s secret, whatever that might be. As for Frank, he was a married man, and had his wife to take care of him, and, heaven be praised! could have no secrets,--at least, none in which Mary could be compelled to interfere.