en that you knew from
the first.'

'From the first as to her father, not as to her mother. Her I did not
know for some time; but I know now.'

'Ah! you have discovered that too?' says he, without much surprise.

'Could I help it? Very well, that being so, I have thought it over; and
I have spoken to Dorothy. I agree to her going. I can do no less than
grant to the Countess her wish, after her kindness to my--your--her--child.'

Then this self-sacrificing woman went hastily away that he might not see
that her heart was bursting; and thereupon, before they left the city,
Dorothy changed her mother and her home. After this, the Countess went
away to London for a while, taking Dorothy with her; and the baronet and
his wife returned to their lonely place at Deansleigh Park without her.

To renounce Dorothy in the bustle of Bath was a different thing from
living without her in this quiet home. One evening Sir Ashley missed his
wife from the supper-table; her manner had been so pensive and woeful of
late that he immediately became alarmed. He said nothing, but looked
about outside the house narrowly, and discerned her form in the park,
where recently she had been accustomed to walk alone. In its lower
levels there was a pool fed by a trickling brook, and he reached this
spot in time to hear a splash. Running forward, he dimly perceived her
light gown floating in the water. To pull her out was the work of a few
instants, and bearing her indoors to her room, he undressed her, nobody
in the house knowing of the incident but himself. She had not been
immersed long enough to lose her senses, and soon recovered. She owned
that she had done it because the Contessa had taken away her child, as
she persisted in calling Dorothy. Her husband spoke sternly to her, and
impressed upon her the weakness of giving way thus, when all that had
happened was for the best. She took his reproof meekly, and admitted her
fault.

After that she became more resigned, but he often caught her in tears
over some doll, shoe, or ribbon of Dorothy's, and decided to take her to
the North of England for change of air and scene. This was not without
its beneficial effect, corporeally no less than mentally, as later events
showed, but she still evinced a preternatural sharpness of ear at the
most casual mention of the child. When they reached home, the Countess
and Dorothy were still absent from the neighbouring Fernell Hall, but in
a month