aised her
hands in mute despair, then quietly covered her face with them, and
soon the tears trickled through her white fingers.

Sir Charles looked at her, and was touched at her silent grief.

"My darling wife," said he, "I think this is the only thing you and I
cannot agree upon. Why not be wise as well as loving, and avoid it."

"I will never seek it again," sobbed Lady Bassett. "But oh," she cried,
with sudden wildness, "something tells me it will meet me, and follow
me, and rob me of my husband. Well, when that day comes, I shall know
how to die."

And with this she burst away from him, like some creature who has been
stung past endurance.

Sir Charles often meditated on this strange scene: turn it how he could
he came back to the same conclusion, that she must have an
hallucination on this subject. He said to himself, "If Bella really
believed the boy was a changeling, she would act upon her conviction,
she would urge me to take some steps to recover our true child, whom
the gypsies or the fairies have taken, and given us poor dear Reginald
instead."

But still the conversation, and her strange looks of terror, lay
dormant in his mind: both were too remarkable to be ever forgotten.
Such things lie like certain seeds, awaiting only fresh accidents to
spring into life.

The month rolled away, and the day came for Reginald's liberation. A
dogcart was sent for him, and the heir of the Bassetts emerged from a
county jail, and uttered a whoop of delight; he insisted on driving,
and went home at a rattling pace.

He was in high spirits till he got in sight of Huntercombe Hall; and
then it suddenly occurred to his mercurial mind that he should probably
not be received with an ovation, petty larceny being a novelty in that
ancient house whose representative he was.

When he did get there he found the whole family in such a state of
commotion that his return was hardly noticed at all.

Master Compton's dinner hour was two P.M., and yet, at three o'clock of
this day, he did not come in.

This was reported to Lady Bassett, and it gave her some little anxiety;
for she suspected he might possibly be in the company of Ruperta
Bassett; and, although she did not herself much object to that, she
objected very much to have it talked about and made a fuss. So she went
herself to the end of the lawn, and out into the meadow, that a servant
might not find the young people together, if her suspicion was correct.

Sh