“Wait then, Simon.”

Old Simon stood aside, and the clerk, turning to Mrs. Ashton, continued his unfinished sentence.

“She wanted to persuade me she saw young Lord Hartledon pass at six o’clock this morning.  A very likely tale that, ma’am.”

“Perhaps she dreamt it, Jabez,” said Mrs. Ashton, quietly.

Jabez chuckled; but what he would have answered was interrupted by the old servant.

“It’s Mr. Elster that’s come; not Lord Hartledon.”

“Mr. Elster!  How do you know, Simon?” asked Mrs. Ashton.

“The gardener mentioned it, ma’am, when he came in just now,” was the servant’s reply.  “He said he saw Mr. Elster walk past this morning, as if he had just come by the luggage-train.  I’m not sure but he spoke to him.”

“The answer is ‘No,’ Simon,” interposed the Rector, alluding to the note he had been reading.  “But you can send word that I’ll come in some time to-day.”

“Charles, did you hear what Simon said—­that Mr. Elster has come down?” asked Mrs. Ashton.

“Yes, I heard it,” replied the doctor; and there was a hard dry tone in his voice, as if the news were not altogether palatable to him.  “It must have been Percival Elster your wife saw, Jabez; not Lord Hartledon.”

Jabez had been arriving at the same conclusion.  “They used to be much alike in height and figure,” he observed; “it was easy to mistake the one for the other.  Then that’s all this morning, sir?”

“There is nothing more, Jabez.”

In a room whose large French window opened to flowerbeds on the side of the house, bending over a table on which sundry maps were spread, her face very close to them, sat at this moment a young lady.  It was the same face you have just seen in the portrait—­that of Dr. and Mrs. Ashton’s only daughter.  The wondrously sunny expression of countenance, blended with strange sweetness, was even more conspicuous than in the portrait.  But what perhaps struck a beholder most, when looking at Miss Ashton for the first time, was a nameless grace and refinement that distinguished her whole appearance.  She was of middle height, not more; slender; her head well set upon her shoulders.  This was her own room; the schoolroom of her girlhood, the sitting-room she had been allowed to call her own since then.  Books, work, music, a drawing-easel, and various other items, presenting a rather untidy collection, met the eye.  This morning it was particularly untidy.  The charts covered the table; one of them lay on the carpet; and a pot of mignonette had been overturned inside the open window scattering some of the mould.  She was very busy; the open sleeves of her lilac-muslin dress were thrown back, and her delicate hands were putting the finishing touches in pencil to a plan she had been copying, from one of the maps.  A few minutes more, and the pencil was thrown down in relief.

“I won’t colour it this morning; it must be quite an hour and a half since I began; but the worst is done, and that’s worth a king’s ransom.”  In the escape from work, the innocent gaiety of her heart, she broke into a song, and began waltzing round the room.  Barely had she passed the open window, her back turned to it, when a gentleman came up, looked in, stepped softly over the threshold, and imprisoned her by the waist.