nly secure Miss Power for heroine the
cast will be excellent.'

'Excellent!' said Somerset, with a spectral smile.

VII.

When he awoke the next morning at the Lord-Quantock-Arms Hotel Somerset
felt quite morbid on recalling the intelligence he had received from
Mrs. Camperton. But as the day for serious practical consultation about
the castle works, to which Paula had playfully alluded, was now close at
hand, he determined to banish sentimental reflections on the frailties
that were besieging her nature, by active preparation for his
professional undertaking. To be her high-priest in art, to elaborate a
structure whose cunning workmanship would be meeting her eye every day
till the end of her natural life, and saying to her, 'He invented it,'
with all the eloquence of an inanimate thing long regarded--this was no
mean satisfaction, come what else would.

He returned to town the next day to set matters there in such trim that
no inconvenience should result from his prolonged absence at the castle;
for having no other commission he determined (with an eye rather to
heart-interests than to increasing his professional practice) to make,
as before, the castle itself his office, studio, and chief abiding-place
till the works were fairly in progress.

On the tenth he reappeared at Markton. Passing through the town, on the
road to Stancy Castle, his eyes were again arrested by the notice-board
which had conveyed such startling information to him on the night of the
ball. The small bills now appeared thereon; but when he anxiously looked
them over to learn how the parts were to be allotted, he found
that intelligence still withheld. Yet they told enough; the list of
lady-players was given, and Miss Power's name was one.

That a young lady who, six months ago, would scarcely join for
conscientious reasons in a simple dance on her own lawn, should now be
willing to exhibit herself on a public stage, simulating love-passages
with a stranger, argued a rate of development which under any
circumstances would have surprised him, but which, with the particular
addition, as leading colleague, of Captain De Stancy, inflamed him
almost to anger. What clandestine arrangements had been going on in his
absence to produce such a full-blown intention it were futile to guess.
Paula's course was a race rather than a march, and each successive heat
was startling in its eclipse of that which went before.

Somerset was, however, introsp