And yet, she knew not why, she felt unhappy about the circumstance; and this anxiety increased when the following day passed, and the subsequent evening; and yet she saw or heard nothing of Cyril Wedderburn.

CHAPTER VII.

SUSPENSE AND DREAD.

AT noon on the morrow, the time he had promised to come, she looked for Cyril from the turret window of her room, which commanded an extensive view of the road that wound through the grassy and pastoral district. From that turret window and along the same road had more than one ancestress of Mary looked for her husband returning from the Scottish wars, in the times of Cromwell, Montrose, and Dundee, and looked in vain.

Through her lorgnette Mary studied every figure that approached on foot or horseback; there were not many, perhaps three or four only, during the entire day; but there was no appearance of Cyril Wedderburn, either mounted on his favourite bay hunter or afoot with rod and gun.

So for that day the thicket was unvisited; no fond whispers were uttered under the old larch-tree, and when midnight came she looked

at her ring as on the preceding night in the vague hope that he might be doing the same, and thinking of her, wherever he might be.

Three days to Mary, long, anxious, and dreary days passed away. Knowing that his leave of absence from the Fusileers was so short, she grudged every hour he spent with others, when he passed so few with her, and now a new source of terror occurred. Had the war broken out suddenly, and Cyril's leave been cancelled? But surely he would have written, and however sudden his departure, should have made an effort to see and to bid her farewell.

Was he ill? That was not improbable, as for three days now the parochial Sangrado, Doctor Squills, had not been near Lonewoodlee ; but then she knew that such rich folks as those at Willowdean would depend more on the greater medical talent, for which they could telegraph at any moment to the metropolis.

She was in an agony of suspense; their residence was not a cheerful place, so visitors were few and far between, and she could learn no tidings of the only other being whom, beside her father, she loved on earth.

On the fourth day, one of her domestics, Alison Home, an elderly woman, who had noticed her feverish anxiety without suspecting its cause, announced that a person on horseback was approaching the house-coming indeed at a gallop

over the Lee. Then Mary rushed to her window, only to be disappointed, as she recognised at once, not Cyril Wedderburn on his long-stepping hunter, but the rather awkward figure of Doctor Squills, on his barrel-shaped Galloway cob.

The Doctor was a suave, well-meaning, fair, florid, and passably good-looking man, about thirty-five or forty years of age, anxious to please all, and to spread the practice in a district where the people were so healthy, that, save for his parochial salary, and one or two retired Bengalees with large livers and purses, he must have starved, his patrons being as few as his patients. Mr. Lennox was certainly a permanent, but far from a lucrative one; yet the Doctor was kind and attentive, all the more so that he had naturally a secret desire to stand well in Mary's estimation, and whenever he visited Lonewoodlee, he almost unconsciously made a more careful toilette than usual.

She received him with a genuine smile of welcome in the gloomy little dining-room, with its deeply embayed windows, its dingy old family portraits, the two great horsehair sofas and veteran chairs and tables, of the shabbiness of which, by long use and wont, she had ceased to be ashamed, though the pretentious coat-armorial of the Lennoxes was carved in stone above the fireplace, at the richly moulded jambs of which there still hung on each side those steel chains

by which the fireirons were secured in the good old Scottish times, when guests would quarrel over their cups, and if their swords were left in the hall, were wont to enforce their arguments with the poker and shovel, if not thus secured to the wall.

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By that bright smile I augur well of my patient, Miss Lennox ?" said Doctor Squills, taking Mary's hand between his own, patting it the while, and seeming very much disposed to retain it as he seated himself, for it was a lovely little hand indeed.

"Thanks, Doctor Squills-papa has been singularly easy and free from pain for three days past," replied Mary, making an effort to retain her impatience for some news of the world.

outer

"That is good-very good. The composing draught taken as usual, I suppose ?"

"All according to your orders. I am a good little nurse, I hope," said Mary, with a smile and a sigh.

There was a pause, and then the Doctor said, "You have heard the great news, of course, Miss Lennox ? but we'll talk of it after I have

seen your papa. Is he awake just now?"

"Yes," said Mary, in a breathless voice, for the idea of "news" terrified her, and she seemed as one frozen, while the Doctor, after leisurely depositing his hat and gloves on the table, where