unguarded words; else why is your mistress so averse to this engagement,
as I have learned she is, by the boy?"

The woman was silent. He seized her arm fiercely. "Have you blabbed?" he
hissed in her ear.

"No," answered she faintly, and struggling to free herself from his
grasp.

"Has she no suspicions of my proximity?" he demanded.

"None," returned the woman; "as I live she has none."

"Then I would look on her a moment to-night."

"That you can easily do," said she. "I left her sitting in a cushioned
seat, drawn close before an open casement, with the full moon shining on
her face."

"A lucky position! I will show myself to her in a few minutes," he
remarked, as the twain parted. Hannah Doliver proceeded rapidly up the
garden avenue to the mansion, and hurried to the apartment of her
mistress.

The invalid lady was sitting in the same position in which she had left
her an hour before.

"You have been absent a long time, Hannah," she observed in a languid
tone.

"I went as far as Col. Malcome's to learn if they had any recent
intelligence of Florence and her father," returned the woman, divesting
herself of bonnet and shawl.

"Well, had he any tidings of them?" inquired the invalid.

"At last accounts they were at Saratoga, intending in a few days to
start on a tour up the Hudson and St. Lawrence, to Quebec, and thence to
the mountain region of New Hampshire," answered the woman.

"Florence wrote to me from Niagara," remarked the lady; "she seemed in
fine spirits. I wonder if she corresponds with Rufus Malcome?"

"Of course," said Hannah; "a young lady would write to her affianced
husband, if she neglected all others." The invalid turned uneasily in
her chair at these words, and her waiting-woman went into an adjoining
apartment under pretence of performing some duty.

The lady sat listlessly gazing on the lovely scene without, when a dark
object moving up the garden path attracted her notice, and directly the
figure of a man in black, with cap removed from a head of
closely-trimmed auburn hair that clustered in short, thick masses of
luxuriant curls around a high, pale brow, appeared before the casement,
and fixed a bold stare upon her face. No sooner did her eyes encounter
those that glared so fiercely upon her, than she uttered a piercing
shriek, and fell back in her chair with the appearance of one from whom
all life had departed.

Hannah rushed into the room and bore the insensible form of