you pitying your
successful rival."

She sprang to her feet, all the softness and entreaty gone from her
face, which was instead now spread with her darkest and most
vindictive look.

"_I_ pity her!" she said. "I hate her. Look you, if I have to do this,
my only consolation will be in knowing that what I do will drag my
successor down below my own level. I suffer; she shall suffer more; I
know you a fiend, she shall find a whole hell with you; she is purer
and better than I have ever been; soon you shall make her worse than I
have dreamt of being. Her purity shall be dishonoured, her love
betrayed, her life reduced to such chaos that she shall cease to
believe even in her God, and in return for these things I will give
her--_you_. Your new plaything shall pass through my mill, George
Caresfoot, before ever she comes to yours; and on her I will repay
with interest all that I have suffered at your hands;" and, exhausted
with the fierceness of her own invective and the violence of
conflicting passions, she sank back into her chair.

"Bravo, Anne! quite in your old style. I daresay that the young lady
will require a little moulding, and she could not be in better hands;
but mind, no tricks--I am not going to be cheated out of my bride."

"You need not fear, George; I shall not murder her. I do not believe
in violence; it is the last resort of fools. If I did, you would not
be alive now."

George laughed a little uneasily.

"Well, we are good friends again, so there is no need to talk of such
things," he said. "The campaign will not be by any means an easy one--
there are many obstacles in the way, and I don't think that my
intended has taken a particular fancy to me. You will have to work for
your letters, Anne; but first of all take a day or two to think it
over, and make a plan of the campaign. And now good-by; I have got a
bad headache, and am going to lie down."

She rose, and went without another word; but all necessity for setting
about her shameful task was soon postponed by news that reached her
the next morning, to the effect that George Caresfoot was seriously
ill.

CHAPTER XXII

The dog-cart that Arthur had hired to take him away belonged to an
old-fashioned inn in the parish of Rewtham, situated about a mile from
Rewtham House (which had just passed into the hands of the Bellamys),
and two from Bratham Abbey, and thither Arthur had himself driven. His
Jehu, known th