“Sara was going directly to San Francisco.  I will write her to look this thing up.  I will have that girl’s secret before she is a month older, and then we will see whether she comes here to Heathdale to queen it over us.”

She resumed her work, but there was a sullen, resolute expression on her face which told of some purpose that she was determining to carry out at all hazards.

When Sir William’s trunks were at length emptied, she rang for a servant to take them to a storeroom, after which she repaired to her own apartment, where she wrote steadily and rapidly for more than an hour.

At the end of that time she folded and sealed her letter, and directed it to “Mrs. Sara Farnum, Palace Hotel, San Francisco, Cal.,” and the very next post from Heathdale carried on its way the missive that was destined to help accomplish one of the greatest wrongs that had ever been perpetrated.

The reader will doubtless remember that when the dowager Lady Heath and Lady Linton were discussing Sir William’s sudden marriage the name “Sadie” was mentioned in connection with the baronet.

Sadie was a beautiful English girl of two or three-and-twenty and the youngest child and only daughter of Mrs. Sara Farnum, to whom Lady Linton had just written.

Sadie Farnum had said and thought a great deal upon learning of Sir William’s union with the American maiden, for the news had been a terrible death-blow to her own hopes and ambitions.

She had long entertained the desire and intention of one day becoming the mistress of Heathdale; it had been the dearest wish of her heart, and for years she had used every art in which she was skilled to bring the man she loved to her feet, and thus accomplish her purpose.

Mrs. Farnum and Lady Linton had been intimate friends from girlhood, and it had also been a darling scheme of theirs to marry the daughter of the one to the brother of the other, thus securing a fine position and title to Sadie, and adding to the already well-filled coffers of Heathdale the handsome fortune which the young girl would bring to her husband.

But Sir William had never appeared to be particularly fond of the society of ladies, at least he was not what would be termed a ladies’ man, although he went frequently into company, and did not fall in with those plans for his future happiness as readily as their projectors desired.

He liked Sadie well enough as a friend, and had been in the way of seeing a great deal of her, as Lady Linton frequently invited her to spend several weeks with her.  He even promised to correspond with her when he left England to travel in America, and at the time of his first meeting with Virgie, he had in his pocket a voluminous letter indited by her.

But she had never touched his heart; she was bright, beautiful, and accomplished, yet there was something lacking in her nature which his own demanded and which he recognized at once in the lovely mountain maiden the moment that he met her that wild night when he came a stranger to her home.