June, Mrs. John Scott takes up the Times to look over.  She didn’t often look over the papers, and when she did it was only to see what was going to be played at the theatres.  But that morning her eyes happened to light down on something in the paper as put her into a perfect fury.  She was so beside herself as to let out a good deal that she meant to have kept in.  And by her own goings on I found out that it was the announcement of the marriage, that was to come off in two days at Lone Castle, between the young Marquis of Hereward and the daughter and heiress of Sir Lemuel Levison, as had set her on fire.  I tried my best to quiet her, and even asked her what it was to her?  She said she would soon let ’em all know what it was to her.  I begged her to explain.  But she would give me no satisfaction.  She seemed all cock-a-whoop, begging your ladyship’s pardon, to go somewhere and do something.  And that same night she packed her carpet-bag and off she went.  I asked her what I should say to Mr. John Scott if he should come home before she did.  And she told me never to mind.  I shouldn’t have any call to say anything. She should see him before I could.  And so off she went that same night.”

“What night was that?” slowly and faintly breathed Salome, without lifting her fallen head.

“Two nights before—­before the marriage was to have been, my lady,” answered the woman, in a low and hesitating tone.

“Proceed, please.”

“And now, my lady, I must tell you what happened at Lone, as I received it from her own lips this very morning, before I came here.  She went down to Scotland by the night express of the Great Northern, and arrived at Lone early in the morning of the day before the wedding-day that should have been.  She found great preparations going on for the marriage of the markis and the heiress.  She went over to the castle with the crowd of the country people who gathered there to see the grand decorations for the wedding.  But she saw nothing of the bride or of the bridegroom; and, moreover, she was warned off with threats by the servants of the castle.  But at length, towards night-fall, my lady, she saw Mr. John Scott, as he called himself, hanging about the Hereward Arms, and she ‘went for him,’ as the saying is.  But he drew her apart from the crowd.  And there she charged him with perfidy, and threatened to appear at the church the next day with her marriage lines and forbid the banns.  He did all he could to quiet her, said that she was deceived and mistaken, and that he could not marry any one, being already married to herself, and that if she would meet him that night at the castle, just under the balcony, near Malcolm’s Tower, he would explain everything to her satisfaction.”

“It was no dream, then! Oh, Heaven! it was no dream!  And my own senses witness against him!” exclaimed Salome again, throwing up her face and hands with a cry of anguish, and then dropping them, as before, upon the table in an attitude of abject despair.