how Fate had
circumvented the plotter.

Alas, how foolish I was to laugh! Rupert is a dangerous enemy, and I
have made him mine; and in a few hours he has shuffled the cards, and
now he holds the trumps again. For that there is _du Rupert_ in this
sudden departure of my knight, I am convinced. Of course, _his_
reasons are plain to see. It is the vulgarest ambition that prompts
him to oust his brother for as long as possible--for ever, if he can.

And now, _I_ am outwitted. _Je rage._

I have never been so unhappy. My heart feels all crushed. I see no
help anywhere. I cannot in common decency go and seek Sir Adrian upon
his island again, and so I sit and cry.

* * * * *

Immediately upon his arrival Tanty was closeted with Sir Adrian in the
chamber allotted to her for so long a space of time that Rupert,
watching below in an inward fever, now flung back in his chair biting
his nails, now restlessly pacing the room from end to end, his mind
working on the new problem, his ears strained to catch the least sound
the while, was fain at last to ring and give orders for the immediate
sounding of the dinner bell (a good hour before that meal might be
expected) as the only chance of interrupting a conference which boded
so ill to his plans. Meanwhile Madeleine sobbed out the story of her
grief and joy on Molly's heart; and Miss Sophia, who thus
inconsiderately arrested in the full congenial flow of a new grief,
was thrown back upon her old sorrows for consolation, had felt
impelled to pay a visit to the rector's grave with the watering-can,
and an extra pocket-handkerchief.

Never perhaps since that worthy clergyman had gasped out his last
struggling breath upon her bosom had she known more unmixed
satisfaction than during those days when she hovered round poor
prostrate Madeleine's bed and poured into her deaf ear the tale of her
own woes and the assurances of her thoroughly understanding sympathy.
She had been looking forward, with a chastened eagerness, to the
arrival of the mourning, and had already derived a good deal of
pleasure from the donning of certain aged weeds treasured in her
wardrobe; it was therefore a distinct though quite unconscious
disappointment when the news came which put an untimely end to all
these funereal revels.

At the shrill clamour of the bell, as Rupert anticipated, Adrian
emerged instantly from his aunt's room, and a simultaneous jingle of
minor bells anno