I have written to my niece. Sir Thomas and
Lady Boldero never come to town at this season,
so I have asked Clare to come up and see that
the house is all comfortable for Laura. Clare
can stay at her cousin's till we arrive."

"Her cousin's?" asked Mark Felton; and
George blessed him for the question, for he did
not know who was meant, and had never yet
brought himself to make an inquiry in which
Clare Carruthers was concerned, even by
implication.

"Mrs. Stanhope, Sir Thomas's daughter,"
said Mr. Carruthers; "she was married just
after we left Poynings."

"The young lady of whom Captain Marsh
made such appropriate mention," thought
George.

"I have no town-house," continued Mr.
Carruthers, with more of the old pompous
manner than Mr. Felton had yet remarked in
him. "Laura prefers Poynings, so do I; and
as my niece came down only this spring, and
has been detained in the country by several
causes, we have not thought it necessary to
have one."

"I should think you would find a town-
house a decided nuisance," said Mr. Felton,
frankly; "and if Miss Carruthers has Sir Thomas
Boldero's and Mrs. Stanhope's to go to, I don't
see that she wants anything more."

"You forget," said Mr. Carruthers, in a quiet
tone, which, nevertheless, conveyed to Mr.
Felton's quick apprehension that he had made a
grave mistake, and implied to perfection the
loftiness of rebuke —"you forget that Miss
Carruthers is the heiress of Poynings!"

"Ah, to be sure, so I do," said Mark Felton,
heartily, "and I beg her pardon and yours; but
at least I shall never forget that she is the most
charming girl I ever saw in my life." And then,
as if a secret inspiration led him to put the question
which George longed to hear and dared not
ask, he said:

""When is Miss Carruthers to arrive in London?"

"Only three or four days before we shall get
there, I fancy. My love," turning abruptly to
Mrs. Carruthers, as a happy idea struck him,
by which her additional comfort might be
secured, "what would you think of my desiring
Clare to bring Brookes up with her? Should
you like to have her with you when you are in
town?"

Mrs. Carruthers turned a face full of distress
upon her husband in reply to his kind question.
It was deeply flushed for a moment, then it
grew deadly pale; her eyes rolled towards
George with an expression of doubt, of searching,
of misty anguish, which filled him with
alarm, and she put out her hands with a
gesture of avoidance.

"Oh no, no," she said, "I cannot see her
yet—I am not able—I don't know—there's
something, there's something."

It might have struck Mr. Carruthers and
Mark Felton too, had they not been too much
alarmed to think of anything but Mrs. Carruthers's
emotion, that when they both approached
her eagerly, George did not attempt to do so.
He rose, indeed, but it was to push back his
chair and get out of their way. Mr. Carruthers
asked her tenderly what was the matter,
but she replied only by laying her head upon
his breast in a passion of tears.

In the evening, when Dr. Merle had seen
Mrs. Carruthers, had said a great deal about
absolute quiet, but had not interdicted the
purposed return to England, when it had been
decided that there was to be no leave-taking
between her and her brother and son, who
were to commence their journey on the morrow,
Mr. Carruthers, sitting by his wife's bed, where
she then lay quietly asleep, arrived at the
conclusion that the old nurse was connected with
the "shock." The idea gave him acute pain.
It must have been, then, something which had
some reference to his wife's past life,
something in which he and the present had no share.
Very old, and worn, and troubled Mr. Carruthers
looked as the darkness came on and
filled the room, and once more the night wind
arose, and whistled and shrieked over Taunus.
He began to wish ardently, earnestly, to get
home. It was very strange to look at his wife,
always before his eyes, and know she had a
terrible secret grief, which had thus powerfully
affected her, and not to dare to question her
about it. This fresh confirmation of the fact,
this new manifestation of her sufferings, after
so peaceful an interval, had in it something
awful to the mind of Mr. Carruthers.

The brother and the son, in their different
ways, were equally disturbed by the occurrence—
Mark Felton in his ignorance and conjecture,
George in the painful fulness of his knowledge
and his self-reproach.

And as Mark Felton's look had alone
arrested George's impulsive desire to reveal his
knowledge of Poynings to Mr. Carruthers, so
the remembrance of all Routh and Harriet had
said to him of the difficulty, the embarrassment,
the probable danger of an acknowledgment,
alone arrested his desire to inform his uncle of
the dreadful error which had caused his mother's
illness.

Mark Felton and George Dallas left
Homburg for Paris on the following day. They had
separated for the night earlier than usual, and
George had employed himself for some hours
in writing a long and confidential letter to his
friend Cunningham. It was addressed to that
gentleman at The Mercury office, and it
contained full details of every particular which he
had been able to learn connected with his missing
cousin. The purpose of the letter was an
urgent request that Cunningham would at once
communicate with the police on this matter,
and it concluded with these words:

"I cannot conquer my apprehensions, and I
will not yet communicate them to my uncle.
But, mark this, I am convinced we shall learn
nothing good at Paris; and we have done very
wrong in not putting the police to work long
ago. Don't laugh at me, and call me a novelist