fell over his arm as she lay
like a child in his embrace.

A few minutes later the library was empty, when the curtains that shrouded
a recess near where the lovers had sat were drawn back, and Sir John
Daventry emerged from his concealment. His countenance betrayed little of
what passed within; every other feeling was swallowed up in a thirst for
revenge--a thirst that would have risked life itself to accomplish its
object--for his suspicions had gone beyond the truth, black, dreadful as
was that truth to a husband's ears, and he fancied that his unborn infant
owed its origin to Charles Mardyn; when, for that infant's sake, where no
other consideration could have restrained her, Lady Alice had endured her
woman's wrong, and while confessing her love for Mardyn, refused to listen
to his solicitations, or to fly with him; and the reference she had made
to this, and which he had overheard, appeared to him but a base design to
palm the offspring of her love to Mardyn as the heir to the wealth and
name of Daventry.

It wanted now but a month of Lady Alice's confinement, and even Mardyn and
Clara were perplexed and indecisive as to the effect their stratagem had
upon Sir John. No word or sign escaped him to betray what passed within--he
seemed stricken with sudden age, so stern and hard had his countenance
become, so fixed his icy calmness. They knew not the volcanoes that burned
beneath their undisturbed surface. A sudden fear fell upon them; they were
but wicked--they were not great in wickedness. Much of what they had done
appeared to them clumsy and ill-contrived; yet their very fears lest they
might be seen through urged on another attempt, contrived to give
confirmation to Sir John's suspicions, should his mind waver. So great at
this time was Mardyn's dread of detection that he suddenly left the Hall.
He know Sir John's vengeance, if once roused, would be desperate, and
feared some attempts on his life. In truth his position was a perilous
one, and this lull of fierce elements seemed to forerun some terrible
explosion--where the storm might spend its fury was as yet hid in darkness.
Happy was it for the Lady Alice Daventry that she knew none of these
things, or hers would have been a position of unparalleled wretchedness,
as over the plotters, the deceived, and the foredoomed ones, glided on the
rapid moments that brought them nearer and nearer, till they stood on the
threshold of crime and death.

And now, through