a picture true to life of Sir
Maxwell Danby. He was an utterly unscrupulous and base man. He had no
standard of morality, except the standard of doing what best satisfied
his own selfish and low aims. How it was that he had determined to win a
woman like Griselda, I cannot say, so utterly different as she was from
the many women who had fallen into his power. But the fact remained that
he _was_ determined to win her, and if he failed, his love--though I desecrate that word by applying it to any feeling of Sir Maxwell
Danby's--would assuredly turn to hatred and determination to do what he
could to destroy her happiness.

As Griselda sat that evening with the light of two tall candles in their
massive brass candlesticks, shining on her beautiful face, there was no
shadow over it.

What if Lady Betty renounced her, and turned her out of the
house?--well, if the whole world were against her, she was no longer
_alone_. She was his, who loved her, and was ready at any moment to take
her to his heart and home. "I must write to him," she was saying as she
stroked her cheek with the soft feather at the end of her quill; "I must
write to him and tell him all--everything! and then he will know what to
do."

Soon the pen began to move over the paper, and she smiled as she put it
through the "sir," which had been written after "dear," and substituted
"Leslie."

How strange and yet how sweet it was to look at it! And then she went
on:

"I said you must wait till I called you by your name! You have not had
to wait long."

She wrote on till she heard a bustle on the pavement below her window.
She went to it, and looking down saw the link-boys with their torches
and the chair in which Lady Betty was being carried off to the Assembly,
and the chair was followed by another, and several dark figures shrouded
in long cloaks were in attendance.

It was a clear frosty evening. The sky was studded with countless stars,
and the fields and meadows then lying before North Parade, made a blank
space of sombre hue where no distant forms of tree or dwelling could be
traced; while beyond was the dim outline of the hills, which stand round
about that City of the West. Lonely heights then!--now crowned by many
stately terraces and houses, where a thousand lamps shine, and define
the outline of the crescents and upward-reaching streets and roads. But
gas was not known in that winter of 1780! It lay hidden in those
strangely-mysterious places,