ed without disappointment to any one, unless it may
be Caroline's mother, the handsome Olympia. She is furious, Lord Hilton
tells me. I am a little sorry for that poor woman. Of course, she wasn't
just as she should be to Caroline, but I can't help liking her, after
all. There that dear girl sits, like patience on a monument, waiting for
me. I wonder what has become of Lord Hilton?"

Here Lady Clara and her lover separated; she joined her friend, whose
garments were visible through the green of the leaves, and he walked
toward the village, very happy, notwithstanding the uncertainty of his
affairs.

As Hepworth entered his room at the inn, he was accosted with boisterous
familiarity by Mr. Stacy, the New York alderman, who expressed the
broadest astonishment at his presence there, and was anxious to know if
it would break up his own mission to the castle.

Hepworth reassured him on this point, and gave some additional
directions, which the alderman accepted with nods and chuckles of
self-sufficiency, that were a little repulsive to the younger and more
refined man.

"I understand Matthew Stacy is to be 'A Number One' in the whole
business--sole agent of her mother's trust; by-the-way, who was her
mother?"

There was a shrewd twinkle in Stacy's eye as he asked this, which
Hepworth comprehended and met at once.

"Her mother was the first Lady Hope, the only daughter of Lady Carset,
up there at the castle. She died in America while travelling there with
her husband, about fifteen years ago."

All this was plain and simple. The alderman drew a deep breath, and the
shrewd twinkle went out of his eyes.

"To tell the truth," he said, "I was thinking of that poor murdered
lady, Mrs. Hurst. You know there was a little girl at the inquest that
would have been about the age of this young lady; for I took a peep into
the peerages, after you opened this matter, and I thought possibly that
Mrs. Hurst and Lady Hope might be--you understand?"

"What! Identical! Did you mean that?"

"Well, no, not exactly identical--she was respectable enough--but the
same person."

"But you forgot, Mr. Stacy, telling me that the young lady who appeared
as a singer in the opera that night was that very child."

"By Jingo! you are right! I did that same. Of course--of course. What
was I thinking of? How she did sing, too; ten thousand mocking birds in
her throat, all piping away at once. What was I thinking of? Now, Mr.
Closs, while I'm g