“Any bad news, Herman?”

“No, madam,” he promptly answered.

“What is the matter, then?”

He hesitated, and answered: 

“Nothing.”

“Who is that letter from?”

“A correspondent,” he replied, escaping from the room.

“Humph!  I might have surmised that much,” laughed the lady, with angry scorn.

But he was out of hearing.

“Did you notice the handwriting on the envelope of that letter, Elizabeth?” she inquired of her elder daughter.

“Which letter, mamma?”

“That one for your brother, of course.”

“No, mamma, I did not look at it.”

“You never look at anything but your stupid worsted work.  You will be an old maid, Elizabeth.  Did you notice it, Elinor?”

“Yes, mamma.  The superscription was in a very delicate feminine handwriting; and the seal was a wounded falcon, drawing the arrow from its own breast—­surmounted by an earl’s coronet.”

“’Tis the seal of the Countess of Hurstmonceux.”

CHAPTER IV.

The fatal deed.

  I am undone; there is no living, none,
  If Bertram be away.  It were all one,
  That I should love a bright particular star,
  And think to wed it, he is so above me. 
  The hind that would be mated by the lion,
  Must die for love.  ’Twas pretty though a plague
  To see him every hour; to sit and draw
  His arched brow, his hawking eyes, his curls
  In our heart’s table; heart too capable
  Of every line and trick of his sweet favor.

  —­Shakspere.

Hannah Worth walked home, laden like a beast of burden, with an enormous bag of hanked yarn on her back.  She entered her hut, dropped the burden on the floor, and stopped to take breath.

“I think they might have sent a negro man to bring that for you, Hannah,” said Nora, pausing in her spinning.

“As if they would do that!” panted Hannah.

Not a word was said upon the subject of Herman Brudenell’s morning visit.  Hannah forebore to allude to it from pity; Nora from modesty.

Hannah sat down to rest, and Nora got up to prepare their simple afternoon meal.  For these sisters, like many poor women, took but two meals a day.

The evening passed much as usual; but the next morning, as the sisters were at work, Hannah putting the warp for Mrs. Brudenell’s new web of cloth in the loom, and Nora spinning, the elder noticed that the younger often paused in her work and glanced uneasily from the window.  Ah, too well Hannah understood the meaning of those involuntary glances.  Nora was “watching for the steps that came not back again!”

Hannah felt sorry for her sister; but she said to herself: 

“Never mind, she will be all right in a few days.  She will forget him.”