"Nay, would you hear? He warned me against the very man I was to have married."

"Disinterested action, truly!"

"So it was," she cried indignantly, "he told me his true character. Yes, and he even said he would lay dead before him, rather than that I-"

In an instant Lettie had sprung up, and covered Adelaide's mouth with her hand, while with the other she pointed to the folding door between that room and the library. A man stood there at the entrance, listening greedily to that last speech of Adelaide's, and a certain twinkle in his eye showed it was not lost upon him.

"Beg pardon," he replied, advancing, แ sorry to interrupt such an animated discussion. Mr. Boyd, I presume?"

"The same, sir-how came you here?"
"Servants left me in the next room, wait-

ing till you should be at leisure; forgot the folding doors were ajar, sir; perhaps the

young lady forgot it too, sir; spoke pretty loud, she did."

"Silence! Your business, sir?"

"Something about this little matter on hand. My client, Lord Danvers, insisted on my coming down to see you on the subject."

"The solicitor," whispered Frederick, as he passed Adelaide. "Foolish girl! your tongue will have helped to hang him."

She stared at him for a moment, then seeing what he meant, rushed from the room. Mr. Boyd requested the solicitor to come into the study, whither he followed with his eldest son. Miss Symnes, fetching a deep sigh, left the room, accompanied by Henrietta, still crying at intervals. Richard, after a few moments' pause, disconsolately walked away, his hands in his pockets; Captain and Mrs. Lynwood having already beat a retreat.

Lettie was left alone, lying a crushed heap across the window-sill, stunned and helpless, the paralyzed brain refused to compass the idea presented to it-Stanhope Vane mur

dered, and Vaughan Dacres, her brother, the murderer. What did it mean? Was it some horrible nightmare, from which the morning would release her? Twilight came on, drawing its mantle's sweep over the sea, and hushing life in the hollow of its hand. Night, rich, dewy night, with all its summer scents and summer sounds followed in the track ; one by one the stars blossomed in heaven; and then the pale, tearful radiance of the moon absorbed them into her own light.

But Lettie heeded none of these things, the long hours drew out all their length unnoticed

-no one came near her. The household had so run out of the old grooves of habit; every thing had so shifted from its place, that she lay there unthought of and forgotten, while the moon shed a flood of brightness over her, and as it were laid pitying hands on her head. Slowly she came to herself, and then she remembered if there was no help and no mercy on earth, there was both in heaven. "His life, his life," she moaned, "be pitiful, oh, God!"

CHAPTER XIII.

NIGHT AND MORNING.

In the meantime Adelaide was walking to and fro in her room, in the writhings of despair. All her softened feelings gone, all her past quiet broken up, no memory of him who lay so cold and still but a few steps off, only one thought between her and the starsVaughan Dacres would die. Oh, the soul had come into her now with a vengeance, and its birth pangs rent her through and through. With a sudden strength and current it had come, threatening the very foundations of life, and tossing and heaving up the billows of

her soul, till the spray thereof blinded her. All the past, what was it? A mere blank, blotted out for ever. All her youth, with its idle pleasures? A child's toy broken for ever. Through the gates of one ended phase of her life she had passed, and they were shut-to for ever. Now, on one side, was there the howling wilderness, on the other, the Archangel with the flaming sword drawn in his hand. Dizzy and deafened, she clung to the first thing she could catch at, and felt it give way in her hand. She was alone-alone on the wide waste of waters, despair within, and around her, and no God to save. She had not answered when He had called her through all the years of careless childhood and thoughtless youth, and now, would those defiant cries for mercy and deliverance help her, when in her madness and her blindness she fell down bound into the midst of the burning fiery furnace? Far into the night a sudden squall of rain and thunder passed like a fierce and angry thing across the summer