of the power of volition. She knew not what to think or believe, or what to do. Aware of the stern necessity for keeping up appearances and for preventing the secrets of her heart from becoming patent to a stranger, she made a vehement essay to start up and question the Doctor again, only to find that he had been gone for nearly an hour and she had known it not. Neither she knew or cared what instructions regarding herself he had left with her two startled and dismayed domestics.

She only knew and could only realize that her lover, her affianced husband, the secret husband of her heart, had perished by some miserable death, whether the result of foul play or some terrible accident she might never know; and now she recalled with grief and terror how she had heard a horse galloping madly past, when she looked at her watch on that fatal Wednesday at midnight; and the wild cry, the prompting, as it seemed, of fear or of despair, that came upward to her ear; and how she had associated that cry with the voice of Cyril Wedderburn!

And his horse had been found at Ernescleugh, near Fast Castle (the Wolf's Craig of Scott's romance), and she knew how frightfully steep the rocks are there!

Her kind, her handsome, and her loving Cyril! Never again would his strong arm caress her slender waist, or his love-lit eyes gaze tenderly

into hers; and now all his soft and loving ways came vividly before her, mingled with a dreadful sense of calamity and loss, till the very tearstears which she longed to mingle with those of his haughty mother-almost choked her as she lay on her bed, prostrate on her face.

On Wednesday she had seen him last, and this was Sunday forenoon: she could hear the bells for service ringing in the village church about a mile distant to remind her of the fact, and that four days-four days in this age of steam and telegraphy had elapsed without trace or tidings of her lost one!

Then she became suddenly aware that her father was ringing his hand-bell furiously, and was querulously, even peevishly, demanding her presence for something.

Her tears, and the cause of them, she was alike compelled to conceal; so, after bathing her eyes hurriedly, she tottered away to attend him as usual.

CHAPTER VIII.

MARY'S MISTAKE.

SHE regretted that she had permitted her emotions to overpower her so much in the presence of the Doctor, and that hence he had been allowed to depart without further questioning when she had so many inquiries to make. From Alison Home and her other domestic she could gather nothing, save that on the same Wednesday, at midnight, they had both heard the swiftly-ridden horse pass along the roadway, and also the strange cry of the rider.

Could it be possible, she was ever asking of herself, that they would meet no more? Never more in the thicket, never more at the stile in the lane at the end of the Lee? that she should never again be gathered to his breast so kindly and so tenderly?

Cyril's love had made her very happy; so much so that it often inspired her with gratitude to God for blessing her so, and no shadow had ever rested upon it, save the secrecy they were

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6

compelled to practise, as they hoped, for a time only, and being both proudly spirited, they had felt that necessity a degradation and source of irritation. Now all that and the love itself had passed away, and a cloud of thought and gloom black as midnight, seemed to envelop the pale girl as she sat alone in the little chamber, gazing listlessly at the sunlit scenery, and with no sound in her ears save the beating of her heart.

Oh, had her brother Harry been spared to her, thought she, Cyril's friend and comrade in India, how differently might she have been situated! How she longed to rush to Willowdean and prosecute inquiries there, but dared not even give expression to the thought!

Only lately she had been anticipating in dread the withdrawal or expiry of his short leave of absence, and his departure to Turkey with the proposed Allied Army. Now she felt that to see him going forth even to face the perils and chances of the threatened Russian war would be a welcome exchange for the present doubt and horror she endured.

All that day no food passed her lips, and as evening drew on the dread of enduring another night without some further intelligence proved too much for her grief and impatience; so the craving to go forth and inquire personally-she could not trust to the discretion of her servants, and shrunk instinctively from their morbid sur

mises-became so strong, that on finding her father sleeping calmly and peacefully after the slight repast he deemed a dinner, she dressed herself in haste to go out-but for where and to whom were her next thoughts?

The nearest house was Chesterhaugh; it was little more than four miles distant, and though she shrunk from the idea of seeing or being seen by Captain Chesters, she resolved, come what might, to question his gatekeeper, as if casually, about the last he had seen of Cyril Wedderburn ; for as the coldness between the two families was pretty well known in that secluded district, she felt assured that the man would imagine her to be prompted by the merest curiosity.

As she set forth on foot, she sighed when passing the empty coachhouse and the stables where the hoofs of horses and the rattle of their stall collars were heard no more. She was young, active, and would walk the distance in an hour; yet not to repine a little when she thought of all that should and might have been, was perhaps impossible.

She did not anticipate that the gatekeeper could add much to the alarming details already furnished by the Doctor, yet she longed to see him as one who, however humble, had been the last who looked on Cyril's winning face and heard his cheerful voice; moreover, the utter solitude of her home had proved on this day