lor's
child,--if, in truth, that daughter was the Lady Anna? Why, above
all things, was the name of the Lady Anna allowed to be mentioned,
as it was mentioned, in connection with that of Daniel Thwaite, the
tailor's son?

During these eight weary years Lady Lovel,--for so she shall be
called,--lived in a small cottage about a mile from Keswick, on the
road to Grassmere and Ambleside, which she rented from quarter to
quarter. She still obtained a certain amount of alimony, which,
however, was dribbled out to her through various sieves, and which
reached her with protestations as to the impossibility of obtaining
anything like the moderate sum which had been awarded to her. And
it came at last to be the case that she hardly knew what she was
struggling to obtain. It was, of course, her object that all the
world should acknowledge her to be the Countess Lovel, and her
daughter to be the Lady Anna. But all the world could not be made to
do this by course of law. Nor could the law make her lord come home
and live with her, even such a cat and dog life as must in such case
have been hers. Her money rights were all that she could demand;--and
she found it to be impossible to get anybody to tell her what were
her money rights. To be kept out of the poorhouse seemed to be all
that she could claim. But the old tailor was true to her,--swearing
that she should even yet become Countess Lovel in very truth.

Then, of a sudden, she heard one day,--that Earl Lovel was again at
the Grange, living there with a strange woman.

CHAPTER II.

THE EARL'S WILL.

Not a word had been heard in Keswick of the proposed return of the
old lord,--for the Earl was now an old man,--past his sixtieth year,
and in truth with as many signs of age as some men bear at eighty.
The life which he had led no doubt had had its allurements, but it
is one which hardly admits of a hale and happy evening. Men who make
women a prey, prey also on themselves. But there he was, back at
Lovel Grange, and no one knew why he had come, nor whence, nor how.
To Lovel Grange in those days, now some forty years ago, there was no
road for wheels but that which ran through Keswick. Through Keswick
he had passed in the middle of the night, taking on the post-horses
which he had brought with him from Grassmere, so that no one in the
town should see him and his companion. But it was soon known that
he was there, and known also that he had a companion. For months he
r