and here is further proof"--and he placed before her the portrait
that he had carried away. It was difficult to [unreadable]. Convinced
against her will, and deprived of the power of giving Bluebell immediate
warning, Mrs. Barrington [unreadable] fall back upon her own room, pull
down the blinds and take refuge in _petite sante_, till prepared to face
her emminent dependent in so new and unwelcome a position.

Certainly this day of elucidation was not a pleasant one. Everybody
appeared in a changed point of view, and was feeling its awkwardness.
Harry and Bluebell, hardly knowing if they had a right to remain there,
wandering disconsolately about, like a modern Adam and Eve awaiting
expulsion from Paradise.

Kate felt baffled and dangerous,--angry at her cousin having slipped so
smoothly through her fingers, and jealous of his wife.

Lord Bromley, though deeply incensed with Harry, was longing to keep
Bluebell, whose every glance and gesture recalled his secretly lamented
son. Lady Calvert was on the point of departure with her daughter; and
the facts having percolated through the household, all the maids got sick
headaches from sympathetic excitement.

Dutton had had a very stormy interview with his cousin when he rushed
after her from the arbour. Kate was determined to betray them, and he
vainly tried to induce her to be silent. On one condition only would she
promise secrecy--that Bluebell should give immediate warning, and that he
should never speak to her again. But Harry only laughed, while Kate urged
everything she could think of--ruin to his prospects, his uncle's anger,
etc.

"It is no business of yours," reiterated Dutton. "If you say anything
about it, you'll soon see you have made a fool of yourself, and the
little you do know is by prying and listening."

But Kate broke from him and darted into the house, past Lady Geraldine,
who was just coming out, and who noticed with surprise the disturbed
appearance of the two cousins. To Dutton she seemed a good angel sent to
invalidate the spells of an evil one. As the reader knows, she alone had
been entrusted with the secret of his marriage, and he now briefly
explained that Kate was bent upon betraying his meetings with Bluebell,
and entreated her, if possible, by any stratagem, to detain her for
awhile.

Geraldine, fully alive to the importance of the request, exclaimed with
a gesture of impatience--

"_How_ provoking! when you were to have told your ow