xt minute when she heard another
click.

But this time it was the latch of the swing gate, half-drowned by the
carriage wheels on the drive leading to the front door.

Then she fell to wondering again, and alighted to enter the house.

Just as she stepped down, a telegraph-boy came up on his bicycle,
smiling, and ready to touch his cap, as he held out to her one of the
familiar tinted envelopes, with prophetic notions about Christmas-boxes
in the future.

"A message!" she said, changing colour for the moment, as thoughts of
the possibilities so often hidden beneath one of those official
envelopes crossed her mind.

"Yes, m'lady. Any answer?"

As head of the establishment of the Denes, bought and paid for with the
money which formed her dowry, she took the message as a matter of
course, and opened it without glancing at the direction, dropped the
envelope on to the stone steps, and the pleasant breeze whisked it in
among the shrubs.

She had turned pale on receiving the telegram. As she read it she
turned pink on finding it was a private communication not intended for
her eyes, and then scarlet with indignation and wrath.

"Why, this is dated yesterday," she cried angrily.

"Yes, m'lady. We had such a lot o' racing messages, my Gee couldn't get
'em all through. But we've got a special gal on, and it'll be all right
now."

"No answer!" said Lady Lisle, sharply, and she hurried into the hall,
and from thence into the breakfast-room, to stand with temples
throbbing, reading the message again--

"All found out at last. Do pray tell her ladyship. She won't be very
hard upon us if you confess everything. Not sorry, after all, for it
must have been known soon. Do, do come over, and face it out with me.
Pray, pray come.--La Sylphide."

"Oh-h-h-h!" moaned the poor woman, in a quivering sob; and she stood
rigid for a few minutes, crushing the message in her hand, suffering
agonies from the awakening for the first time in her life of the passion
known as jealousy. It filled her, so to speak, and overmastered
everything. There could be no other possibility--no doubt--the demon
had her in its grasp, and everything now had some bearing upon the
message. All passages in her life during the past few months tended
towards proving that she had been basely, cruelly deceived.

Hilton had gradually been growing colder and more indifferent; he had
grown moody and thoughtful. It had struck her that he was careless