a
little bye-lane which led to the foot of the lake. Just as she did so,
she heard the deadened footfall of a fast-trotting horse, accompanied
by the faint roll of carriage-wheels over the snow. As she turned half
involuntarily to see who it was that travelled so fast, the creeping
mist was driven aside by a puff of wind, and she saw a splendid blood-
horse drawing an open victoria trotting past her at, at least, twelve
miles an hour. But, quickly as it passed, it was not too quick for her
to recognize Lady Bellamy wrapped up in furs, her dark, stern face
looking on straight before her, as though the mist had no power to dim
_her_ sight. Next second the dark closed in, and the carriage had
vanished like a dream in the direction of Isleworth.

Angela shivered; the dark afternoon seemed to have grown darker to
her.

"So she _is_ back," she said to herself. "I felt that she was back.
She makes me feel afraid."

Going on her way, she came to a spot where the path forked, one track
leading to a plank with a hand-rail spanning the stream that fed the
lake, and the other to some stepping-stones, by crossing which and
following the path on the other side a short cut could be made to the
rectory. The bridge and the stepping-stones were not more than twenty
yards apart, but so intent was Angela upon her own thoughts and upon
placing her feet accurately on the stones that she did not notice a
little man with a red comforter, who was leaning on the hand-rail,
engaged apparently in meditation. The little man, however, noticed
her, for he gave a violent start, and apparently was about to call out
to her, when he changed his mind. He was Sir John Bellamy.

"Better let her go perhaps, John," he said, addressing his own effigy
in the water. "After all, it will be best for you to let things to
take their course, and not to burn your own fingers or commit yourself
in any way, John. You will trap them more securely so. If you were to
warn the girl now, you would only expose them; if you wait till he has
married her, you will altogether destroy them with the help of that
young Heigham. And perhaps by that time you will have touched those
compromising letters, John, and made a few other little arrangements,
and then you will be able to enjoy the sweets of revenge meted out
with a quart measure, not in beggarly ones or twos. But you are
thinking of the girl--eh, John? Ah! you always were a pitiful beggar;
but tread down the inclination,