el.
No. If you follow me, I shall call him back."

She disengaged herself from her suitor, and tripped lightly through
the gloom in the footsteps of Owen.

Michael watched her retreating form with a scowl darker even than that
with which he rose to meet the intruder upon his courtship. "Shalt rue
the day"--he muttered, "shalt rue the day that saw thee cross my
wooing. A better man than me, did she say? Look to thyself, Master
Edward Owen."

With a heaving breast and an irregular gait, Sinson paced to and fro
for some time along the edge of the cliff, and then turned moodily to
Wilderness Lodge. The next day he departed on his way to London.

CHAPTER VII.

"Il y a dans un mariage malheureux une force qui depasse
toutes les autres peines de ce monde."

MADAME DE STAEL.

The summons which called Michael Sinson from the far-west to the
metropolis, was the result of impulse rather than of settled design on
the part of his patroness. Quick in reading the characters of all who
crossed her path, in her first brief colloquy with the rustic, Mrs.
Pendarrel detected his animosity towards Trevethlan; and in his sly
but fierce countenance, in his well-built but cringing form, she saw
the traits of one who would not be scrupulous in his mode of attacking
an enemy. From the very first, she suspected that the announced
continental tour of the orphans was a ruse, and the notion gained
strength whenever it recurred to her mind. But if they were still in
England, they were probably abiding in London. She caught at the idea,
and thought suddenly it would be well to have some one at hand who
knew them personally.

Suspiciousness is natural to tyranny: spies are the agents of despots.
Love of rule, said by the fairy to be the universal passion of the
sex, was undoubtedly dominant in Mrs. Pendarrel. But it is a desire
which, at least in youth, will find one powerful rival. And so she
proved. The haughty beauty kept her affection down with a strong hand,
but it stung her nevertheless. The wound rankled ever in her heart;
and many a time and oft she cast a rapid glance upon her life, and in
momentary weakness compared what was indeed a dark reality, with a
visionary possibility whose very glory made her sad.

But though such reflections might sadden, they were far from softening
her. They always terminated in the conviction that she had been ill
used. As years sped by,