counsel, do as I bid you, and leave the rest to
me.' And with that, she turns round quick
on her heel, and falls to walking up and down
the room—faster, faster, faster, till she is out
of breath. Then she pulls the bell with an
angry jerk, and calls out loud at the door,
' The horses! I want to ride; ' then turns
upon Sarah, ' My gown for riding in! Pluck
up your heart, poor creature! On my life
and honour I will save you. My gown, my
gown , then; I am mad for a gallop in the
open air! ' And she goes out in a fever
of the blood, and gallops, gallops, till the
horse reeks again, and the groom-man who
rides after her wonders if she is mad. When
she comes back, for all that ride in the air,
she is not tired. The whole evening after,
she is now walking about the room, and
now striking loud tunes all mixed up
together on the piano. At the bed-time, she
cannot rest. Twice, three times in the night she
frightens Sarah by coming in to see how she
does, and by saying always those same words
over again, ' Keep your own counsel, do as I
bid you, and leave the rest to me.' In the
morning, she lies late, sleeps, gets up very
pale and quiet, and says to Sarah, ' No word
more between us two of what happened
yesterday—no word till the time comes when
you fear the eyes of every stranger who looks ,
at you. Then I shall speak again. Till that
time let us be as we were before I put the
question yesterday, and before you told the
truth.'"

At this point he broke the thread of the
narrative again, explaining, as he did so, that
his memory was growing confused about a
question of time, which he wished to state
correctly in introducing the series of events
that were next to be described.

"Ah, well! well!" he said, shaking his
head, after vainly endeavouring to pursue
the lost recollection. "For once, I must
acknowledge that I forget. Whether it was
two months, or whether it was three, after
the mistress said those last words to Sarah,
I know not—but at the enf of the one
time, or of the other, she, one morning,
orders her carriage and goes away alone to
Truro. In the evening she comes back with
two large, flat baskets. On the cover of
the one there is a card, and written on it
are the letters, ' S. L.' On the cover of the
other there is a card, and written on it are
the letters, ' R. T.' The baskets are taken
into the mistress's room, and Sarah is called,
and the mistress says to her, ' Open the '
basket with S. L. on it; for those are the
letters of your name, and the things in it
are yours.' Inside, there is first a box, which
holds a grand bonnet of black lace; then a
fine, dark shawl; then black silk of the best
kind, enough to make a gown; then linen
and stuff for the under garments, all of the
finest sort. 'Make up those things to fit
yourself,' says the mistress. 'You are so
much littler than I, that to make things
up, new, is less trouble, than from my fit to
yours, to alter old gowns.' Sarah, to all
this, says in astonishment, ' Why? ' And
the mistress answers, 'I will have no
questions. Remember what I said; keep your
own counsel, and leave the rest to me!' So
she goes out, and leaves Sarah to work;
and the next thing she does is to send for
the doctor to see her. He asks what is the
matter; gets for answer that she feels
strangely, and not like herself; also that she
thinks the soft air of Cornwall makes her
weak. The days pass, and the doctor comes
and goes, and, say what he may, those two
answers are always the only two that he can
get. All this time, Sarah is at work; and
when she has done, the mistress says, ' Now
for the other basket with R. T. on it; for
those are the letters of my name, and the
things in it are mine.' Inside this, there is
first a box which holds a common bonnet of
black straw; then a coarse dark shawl;
the a gown of good common black stuff;
then linen, and other things for the under
garments, that are only of the sort called
second best. 'Make up all that rubbish,'
says the mistress, 'to fit me. No questions!
You have always done as I told you ' do as I
tell you now, or you are a lost woman.'
When the rubbish is made up, she tries it
on, and looks in the glass, and laughs in a
way that is wild and desperate to hear. 'Do
I make a fine, buxom, comely, servant-woman?'
she says. 'Ha! but I have acted that part
times enough in my past days in the
theatre-scene.' And then she takes off the clothes
again, and bids Sarah to pack them up at once
in one trunk, and pack th things she has
made for herself in another. 'The doctor
orders me to go away out of this damp-soft
Cornwall climate, to where the air is fresh,
and dry, and cheerful-keen!' she says, and
takes some knick-knack things off the table,
and among them a brooch which has on it
the likeness of the sea-captain's face. The
mistress sees her, turns white in the cheeks,
trembles all over, snatches the brooch away,
and locks it up in the cabinet in a great
hurry, as if the look of it frightened her. 'I
shall leave that behind me,' she says, and
turns around on her heel, and goes quickly out
of the room. You guess, now, what the
thing was that Mistress Treverton had it in
her mind to do?"

He addressed the question to Rosamond
first, and then repeated it to Leonard. They
both answered in the affirmative, and
entreated him to go on.

"You guess ? " he said. " It is more than
Sarah, at that time, could do. What with
the misery in her own mind, and the strange
ways and strange words of her mistress, the
wits that were in her were all confused.
Nevertheless, what her mistress has said to
her that she has always done; and together