“This is worse than I thought, but it does not alter the fact that the girl shall be your wife, Bennett, for I have sworn to keep my promise, and I will not fail you, by Heaven!” vowed Hermann, continuing: “As for neglecting to get matters into shape, that is false, for I have been quietly working to the promised end all these weeks, but, having encountered such determined opposition from the girl, I thought it expedient not to press her too hard, but to depend on force and cunning, since fair means failed. In fact, one of my objects in going to New York was to enlist the aid of my clever half-sister, Mrs. Stirling, in accomplishing the end in view. She will arrive with her daughter this morning, and although I admit that the case looks unpromising now, I believe we will soon wind a web around Leola from which she cannot escape. Go home, Bennett, and rest easy in the thought that before the end of a week she will be your charming bride.” The prospective bridegroom beamed with joy and assured Hermann that he was ready to co-operate in any plan proposed for Leola’s subjugation. “I will go to any length now to punish her for her contempt, and for advising me to marry a skinny old maid like Amanda Tuttle when I’m rich enough to buy a lovely young girl for a bride!” he vowed, coarsely, and took leave with renewed hope. In the hall, as he was going out, he encountered Miss Tuttle, and fancied she might have been eavesdropping from her air of confusion, but he stalked past her with a curt nod that cut to her tender heart like a knife. “Oh, what has come over him when he used to be so friendly? Can it be that he is angry at Leola’s suggestion that he should court me?” sighed the poor thing, deprecatingly. It would have been well indeed if she had been listening, as Bennett suspected, for then she might have been able to inform Leola of the perils that threatened her in the joining of forces of Wizard Hermann and his worldly-wise sister, but she had only been loitering about the hall in hopes of a little interview when he came out, and tears of disappointment brimmed over in her kind gray eyes, when he passed her with so indifferent a greeting. As she followed to the door and watched him galloping away toward home, she saw the carriage coming with the Stirlings, and ran to tell Leola the news. CHAPTER IX. WHAT THE ROBINS HEARD. By-and-by, when Jessie removed the dust of travel, and freshened herself up with a dainty blue gown that just matched her sky-blue eyes, the two girls strolled out upon the lawn, and presently found seats in the favorite rose-arbor, where the robins, nesting overhead, made a mighty twittering in vain protest against their unwelcome intrusion. “It is because you are a stranger, Jessie,” laughed Leola. “It is quite different when Ray and I come here together--they treat us quite as if we belonged to the Robin family.” “Who is Ray?” asked Jessie, curiously.