Lady Pollexfen drew herself up haughtily. "To please you in a whim, Major Strickland, which I cannot characterize as anything but ridiculous, I will try to discover this fancied resemblance." Speaking thus, her ladyship carried her glass to her eye, and favoured me with a cold critical stare, under which I felt my blood boil with grief and indignation. "Pshaw! Major Strickland, you are growing old and foolish. I cannot perceive the faintest trace of such a likeness as you mention. Besides, if it really did exist it would prove nothing. It would merely serve to show that there may be certain secrets within Dupley Walls which not even Major Strickland's well-known acumen can fathom." "After that, of course I can only bid your ladyship farewell," said the offended major, with a ceremonious bow. Then turning to me: "Good-bye, my dear Miss Holme, for the present. Even at this, the eleventh hour, I must intercede with Lady Pollexfen to grant you permission to come and spend part of next week with us at Rose Cottage." "Oh! take her, and welcome; I have no wish to keep her here. But you will stop to dinner, major, when we will talk of these things further. And now, Miss Pest, you had better run away. You have heard too much already." I was glad enough to get away, so after a hasty kiss to Major Strickland I hurried indoors, and once in my own bedroom, I burst into an uncontrollable fit of crying. How cruel had been Lady Pollexfen's words! and her looks had been more cruel than they. I was still weeping when Sister Agnes came into the room. She had but just returned from Tydsbury. She knelt beside me, and took me in her arms and kissed me, and wiped away my tears. "Why was I crying?" she asked. I told her of all that Lady Pollexfen had said. "Oh! cruel, cruel of her to treat you thus!" she said. "Can nothing move her--nothing melt that heart of adamant? But, Janet, dear, you must not let her sharp words wound you so deeply. Would that my love could shield you from such trials in future. But that cannot always be. You must strive to regard such things as part of that stern discipline of life which is designed to tutor our wayward hearts and rebellious spirits, and bring them into harmony with a will superior to our own. And now you must tell me all about your voyage down the Adair, and your rescue by that brave George Strickland. Ah! how grieved I was, when the news was brought to Dupley Walls, that I could not hasten to you, and see with my own eyes that you had come to no harm! But I was chained to my post, and could not stir."