. Clayton proposed driving
Mrs. Damer out in her pony-chaise.

"I don't think you will find it cold, dear, and we can come home by the
lower shrubberies and meet the gentlemen as they return from shooting,"
Colonel Damer being one of the shooting party. But Mrs. Damer had
declined the drive, and made her cousin understand so plainly that she
preferred being left alone, that Mrs. Clayton felt no compunction in
acceding to her wishes, and laying herself out to please the other
ladies staying in the house.

And Mrs. Damer did wish to be alone. She wanted to think over the
incidents of the night before, and devise some plan by which she could
persuade her husband to leave the Grange as soon as possible without
provoking questions which she might find it difficult to answer. When
the sound of the wheels of her cousin's pony-chaise had died away, and
the great stillness pervading Molton Grange proclaimed that she was the
sole inmate left behind, she dressed herself in a warm cloak, and
drawing the hood over her head prepared for a stroll about the grounds.
A little walk she thought would do her good, and with this intention she
left the house. The Grange gardens were extensive and curiously laid
out, and there were many winding shrubbery paths about them, which
strangers were apt to find easier to enter than to find their way out of
again. Into one of these Mrs. Damer now turned her steps for the sake of
privacy and shelter; but she had not gone far before, on turning an
abrupt corner, she came suddenly upon the figure of the gentleman she
had been introduced to the night before, Mr. Laurence, who she had
imagined to be with the shooting party. He was half lying, half sitting
across a rustic seat which encircled the huge trunk of an old tree, with
his eyes bent upon the ground and a cigar between his lips. He was more
an intellectual and fine-looking than a handsome man, but he possessed
two gifts which are much more winning than beauty, a mind of great
power, and the art of fascination. As Mrs. Damer came full in view of
him, too suddenly to stop herself or to retreat, he rose quickly from
the attitude he had assumed when he thought himself secure from
interruption and stood in her pathway. She attempted to pass him with an
inclination of the head, but he put out his hand and stopped her.

"Blanche! you must speak to me; you shall not pass like this; I insist
upon it!" and she tried in vain to disengage her arm from his de