und, and who was esteemed the one both most acute and most just
in the county. Aram interrupted him somewhat abruptly,

"My friend, enough of this presently. But Madeline, what knows she as
yet?"

"Nothing; of course, we kept--"

"Exactly, exactly; you have done wisely. Why need she learn anything as
yet? Say an arrest for debt, a mistake, an absence but of a day or so at
most,--you understand?"

"Yes. Will you not see her, Eugene, before you go, and say this
yourself?"

"I!--O God!--I! to whom this day was--No, no; save me, I implore
you, from the agony of such a contrast,--an interview so mournful and
unavailing. No, we must not meet! But whither go we now? Not, not,
surely, through all the idle gossips of the village,--the crowd already
excited to gape and stare and speculate on the--"

"No," interrupted Lester; "the carriages await us at the farther end of
the valley. I thought of that,--for the rash boy behind seems to have
changed his nature. I loved--Heaven knows how I loved my brother! But
before I would let suspicion thus blind reason, I would suffer inquiry
to sleep forever on his fate."

"Your nephew," said Aram, "has ever wronged me. But waste not words
on him; let us think only of Madeline. Will you go back at once to
her,--tell her a tale to lull her apprehensions, and then follow us with
haste? I am alone among enemies till you come."

Lester was about to answer, when, at a turn in the road which brought
the carriage within view, they perceived two figures in white hastening
towards them; and ere Aram was prepared for the surprise, Madeline had
sunk pale, trembling, and all breathless on his breast.

"I could not keep her back," said Ellinor, apologetically, to her
father.

"Back! and why? Am I not in my proper place?" cried Madeline, lifting
her face from Aram's breast; and then, as her eyes circled the group,
and rested on Aram's countenance, now no longer calm, but full of woe,
of passion, of disappointed love, of anticipated despair, she rose,
and gradually recoiling with a fear which struck dumb her voice, thrice
attempted to speak, and thrice failed.

"But what--what is--what means this?" exclaimed Ellinor. "Why do you
weep, father? Why does Eugene turn away his face? You answer not.
Speak, for God's sake! These strangers,--what are they? And you, Walter,
you,--why are you so pale? Why do you thus knit your brows and fold your
arms! You, you will tell me the meaning of this dreadful si