so chanced that, calling one evening (evening calls are suspicious
where young people are concerned,) Edward was told that Mrs. Myles had
gone over to Lothery, the next post town, and that Miss Rose was out.
The servant (ever since Helen's marriage, Mrs. Myles had thought it
due to her dignity to employ such a person) said this with an air of
mystery, and Edward inquired which way Miss Rose had walked. Indeed,
she did not know.

Edward therefore trusted to chance, and he had not gone very far down
a lane leading to the common of Abbeyweld, when he saw her seated
under a tree (where heroines are surely found at some period or other
of their life's eventful history) reading a letter. Of course he
interrupted her, and then apologised.

"The letter," said Rose, frankly, "is from poor Helen."

"Why do you call her poor?" he inquired.

"Because she is very ill; and I am going to her to-morrow morning."

"Ill!--to-morrow!--so suddenly--so soon!" stammered Edward.

Rose turned homewards with an air of cold constraint. She could not
attribute Edward's agitation to any other cause than his anxiety on
Helen's account, and the conviction gave her intense pain.

"Stay, Rose," he said. Rose walked steadily forward. "There is," he
continued bitterly, "a curse, a spell upon this place. Do you not
remember that it was here--_here_, within five yards of where we
stand--that _she_ first--. But where's the use of thinking of _that_,
or any thing else," he exclaimed with a sudden burst of passion,
"where a woman is concerned? They are all, _all_ alike, and I am a
double fool! But go, Rose, go--enjoy her splendour, and lie in wait,
as she did, for some rich idiot!"

It was now Rose's turn to interrupt. Turning upon Edward, with an
expression of deeply insulted feeling, "Sir," she said; and before she
proceeded the cold monosyllable had entered his heart; "Sir, my cousin
Helen did _not_ lie in wait; a woman's beauty may be called a snare,
if you please, but it is not one of her own making; she was sought and
won, and not by an _idiot_; and it is ungenerous in you to speak thus
now, when time, and her being another's wife"--

Poor Rose had entered on perilous ground, and she felt it, and the
feeling prevented her proceeding. She trembled violently; and if
Edward could have seen her blanched cheek and quivering lip, he would
have checked his impetuosity, and bitterly reproached himself for the
rash words he had uttered. If he could b