her
to decipher its full meaning. As she realized this a dark cloud passed
across her features, she moved silently to the window and looked out;
when she again turned the cloud had vanished and her face was calm and
serene. So occupied with the mail bag had been both uncle and niece that
the action of the lady in question, in first glancing over the paper on
the desk and her subsequent movement towards the window, had remained
unnoticed by either.

"There is a letter for you, my dear," said the Baronet handing one to
Edith. "Oh!" said she joyously, "it is from Arthur. He is the dearest
old fellow, and one of the best correspondents alive; he tells the
funniest stories of the college scrapes he gets into, and how cleverly
he gets out of them, and makes all manner of fun in his caricatures of
the musty old professors."

"There, there now, away to your own room," said her uncle, "and let me
know what new scrape your dear old fellow has been getting in and out
of, during our walk after dinner." Edith blushed slightly and hurried
out of the apartment.

"There are no letters for you this morning, Mrs. Fraudhurst, but here
are the London papers, I have no time at present to look over them, and
would feel obliged if you would lay them on the library table." She took
them, and with a graceful courtesy, smilingly left the room, and went
direct to the library, sat down at the table and drew the writing
materials towards her as if about to write; but ere she commenced her
head sank on her hand and she appeared to be, for some moments, lost in
thought. As she will be brought prominently forward as our story
progresses, we had better inform the reader at once, all we know of her
antecedents.

Mr. Fraudhurst had been a lawyer of some standing in the village of
Vellenaux; he was reported wealthy, and when on the shady side of fifty
married the niece of his housekeeper, much to the disgust of the said
housekeeper, and several maiden ladies of doubtful ages who resided in
the neighbourhood, who had each in her own mind marked him as her
especial property, to be gobbled up at the first opportunity he or
chance might afford them for so doing, and they waxed wrath and were
very bitter against her who had secured the prize and carried it off
when as they thought it just within their grasp. The lawyer and the
Baronet had been upon terms of intimacy for several years prior to the
marriage, and Sir Jasper being a bachelor saw no objection