hoping that she had not heard her father's loud tones.

She had certainly not done so this time. Mrs. Dornell followed the path
along which she had seen Betty wandering, but went a considerable
distance without perceiving anything of her. The Squire's wife then
turned round to proceed to the other side of the house by a short cut
across the grass, when, to her surprise and consternation, she beheld the
object of her search sitting on the horizontal bough of a cedar, beside
her being a young man, whose arm was round her waist. He moved a little,
and she recognized him as young Phelipson.

Alas, then, she was right. The so-called counterfeit love was real. What
Mrs. Dornell called her husband at that moment, for his folly in
originally throwing the young people together, it is not necessary to
mention. She decided in a moment not to let the lovers know that she had
seen them. She accordingly retreated, reached the front of the house by
another route, and called at the top of her voice from a window, 'Betty!'

For the first time since her strategic marriage of the child, Susan
Dornell doubted the wisdom of that step.

Her husband had, as it were, been assisted by destiny to make his
objection, originally trivial, a valid one. She saw the outlines of
trouble in the future. Why had Dornell interfered? Why had he insisted
upon producing his man? This, then, accounted for Betty's pleading for
postponement whenever the subject of her husband's return was broached;
this accounted for her attachment to Falls-Park. Possibly this very
meeting that she had witnessed had been arranged by letter.

Perhaps the girl's thoughts would never have strayed for a moment if her
father had not filled her head with ideas of repugnance to her early
union, on the ground that she had been coerced into it before she knew
her own mind; and she might have rushed to meet her husband with open
arms on the appointed day.

Betty at length appeared in the distance in answer to the call, and came
up pale, but looking innocent of having seen a living soul. Mrs. Dornell
groaned in spirit at such duplicity in the child of her bosom. This was
the simple creature for whose development into womanhood they had all
been so tenderly waiting--a forward minx, old enough not only to have a
lover, but to conceal his existence as adroitly as any woman of the
world! Bitterly did the Squire's lady regret that Stephen Reynard had
not been allowed to com