"Only Jane Meadows," I answered.

I was a favourite with her, and after a slight
hesitation, the door was opened, and Mrs. Vernon
stood before me: her tall and powerful figure
wrapped in a dressing-gown, which left the
sinewy arms bare to the elbow, while the thick
locks of her black hair, just streaked with grey,
fell dishevelled about her swarthy face. The
room behind her was littered from end to end,
and the fire at which she had been sitting was
choked up with cinders, while the window,
tarnished with dust, gave no glimpse of the
mountain landscape beyond. She returned to
her chair before the fire, and surveyed me with
a sullen frown from under her reddened eyelids.
The trembling of her limbs, muscular as they
were, and the glistening of her face, told me not
more surely than the faint and sickly odour
pervading the room, that she had been taking
opium.

"Jane," she cried, with a burst of maudlin
tears, which she did not attempt to conceal,
"come here, and sit down beside me. I am
so miserable, Jane. Your mother was here
on Saturday, telling me that you love Owen
Scott, and everybody wanted him to marry you.
Adelaide, the poor little painted doll, is not fit
to be his wife, and she will make him wretched.
And you will be miserable, like all of us."

My heart sank at the thought of your
wretchedness. "I am not miserable," I replied, throwing
my own arms round her, and looking up
into her wrathful eyes. "You don't know how
strong and peaceful we grow when we seek the
happiness of those we love. We cannot decide
who shall love whom, and it was not God's
will that Owen should choose me. Let us make
them as happy as we can."

She let me lead her to her seat, and talk to
her about you and Adelaide in a way that
tranquillised her, until she consented to dress herself
with my aid, and return with me to the company
assembled in the other part of the house.

But there was something in Adelaide's whole
conduct which tended to irritate Mrs. Vernon.
She was playing silly pranks upon us all,
but especially upon her gloomy aunt, about
whom she hovered with a fretting waywardness
mingled with an unquiet tenderness,
which displayed itself in numberless childish
ways; but with such grace and prettiness,
that none of us could find it in our hearts to chide
her, except Mrs. Vernon herself. I was glad
when the time came for us to leave; though you
loitered across the lawn, looking back every
minute at Adelaide, who stood in the portico:
her white dress gleaming amid the shadows, and
she kissing her little hand to you with a laugh
whose faint musical ringing just reached our ears.

You slept that night, as we often sleep,
unwitting that those who are dear to us as our
own souls are passing through great perils.
You slept, and it was I who watched all night,
and called you early in the morning, with the
news that the sun was rising over the hills
into a cloudless sky, and that your marriage-
day was come.

We were at the rectory betimes, yet the
villagers had reared an arch of flowers over the
gates. Mrs. Vernon, dressed with unusual
richness and care, was watching for us at
the portico, and received us both with a
grave but kindly greeting. All the house
was astir with the hurrying of many feet, and
the sharp click of doors slamming to and fro;
but though you waited restlessly, no one else
came near us in the little room where we three
sat together, until the door was slowly opened
—you turning to it with rapturous impatience
—and Mr. Vernon entered and told us that
Adelaide was nowhere to be found.

"Don't alarm yourself," said Mr. Vernon to
his wife, "but Adelaide has been missing since
daybreak; she was gone when her companions
went to call her. You remember she used to
walk in her sleep if she were much excited; and
this morning the hall door was open, and her
bonnet was found on the way to Ratlinghope.
The agitation of yesterday must have caused
this."

"She was coming to me!" you said, with a
vivid smile and a glow, which faded as you began
to realise the fact of Adelaide's disappearance.

The hills stretched away for many a mile, with
shelving rocks here and there, which hung over
deep still tarns, black with shadows, and hedged
in by reedy thickets. And there were narrow rifts,
cleaving far down into the living stone of the
mountain range, and overgrown with brambles,
where the shepherds sometimes heard their
lambs bleating piteously, out of sight or reach
of help, until the dreary moan died away from
the careless echoes. "Children have been lost
there," cried Mrs. Vernon, wringing her hands
distractedly; and if Adelaide had wandered
away in the darkness, she might be lying now
dead in the depths of the black tarns, or
imprisoned alive in one of the clefts of the rocks.

I never left your side that day; and as hour
after hour passed by, I saw a grey ghastly
change creep over your young face, as your
heart died within you. Mrs. Vernon kept close
beside us, though we soon distanced every other
seeker, and her wonderful strength continued
unabated, even when your despairing energy
was exhausted. I knew the mountains as well
as the shepherds did; and from one black
unruffled tarn, to another like itself, gloomy
and secret-looking, I led you without speaking;
save that into every gorge, whose depth
our straining eyes could not penetrate, we
called aloud, until the dark dank walls of the
gulf muttered back the name of Adelaide.
There was no foot-weariness for us as long as
the daylight lasted; and it seemed as if the sun
could not go down until we had found her.
Now and then we tarried upon the brow of
some headland, with our hands lifted to our
ears that we might catch the most distant
whisper of the signal-bells; the faintest tone
that ever reached the uplands, if there were any
to be borne to us upon the breeze, from the
church belfry in the plain far away.

The search was continued for many days; but