's no time to spare. We shall meet again, Mr. Brown; good
night, good night. I shall tell the Colonel that we've done the
business much more tidily than I could have expected." And without
further ceremony he quitted the room.
Another pause ensued, during which but a few words passed between
Wilton and Lady Laura, who sat gazing thoughtfully into the fire.
Wilton stood by the window and listened, thinking he heard some
distant sounds as of persons speaking, and loud tongues at the
further end of the street. A minute after, however, there came the
clatter of horses' feet upon the pavement of the yard; and in
another instant Byerly's voice was heard, saying, "Come, put to your
spurs," and two horses galloped away from the inn as hard as they
could go.

CHAPTER XXVIII.
IT is wonderful how scenes of danger and difficulty--it is wonderful
how scenes of great excitement of any kind, indeed--draw heart to
heart, and bind together, in bonds indissoluble, the beings that have
passed through them side by side. They are never to be broken, those
bonds; for between us and the persons with whom we have trod such
paths there is established a partnership in powerful memories, out of
which we can never withdraw our interest. But it is not alone that
they are permanent which renders them different from all lighter
ties; it is that they bring us closer, more entirely to each other;
that instead of sharing the mere thoughts of what we may call the
outward heart, we enter into the deepest recesses, we see all the
hidden treasures, we know the feelings and the ideas that are
concealed from the general eye of day, we are no longer kept in the
porch, but admitted into the temple itself.
Wilton was left alone in the small parlour of the inn with Lady
Laura; and as soon as he heard the horses' feet gallop away, he
turned towards her with a glad smile. But when he did so, he found
that her beautiful eyes were now fixed upon him with a gaze deep and
intense--a gaze which showed that the whole thoughts and feelings of
her heart were abstracted from everything else on earth to meditate
on all that she owed to him, and on the things alone that were
connected therewith.
She dropped her eyes as soon as they met his; but that one look was
overpowering to the man who now certainly loved her as deeply as it
is possible for man to love woman. Many a difficulty and doubt had
been removed from his mind by the words which Lord Sherbrooke had
spoken while affecting to seek for the warra