“I wish, Miss Whitmore, that I could satisfactorily answer all your generous inquiries with regard to Mary Mathews.  But I know and hear so little of the gossip of the village, and with the poor girl’s private history I am totally unacquainted—­nay, the girl herself is to me a perfect stranger.  No person is better able to give you the information you require than my cousin Anthony; he knows Mary well.  In spite of my father’s prohibitions, she was always a chosen playfellow of his.  He professes a great admiration for this beautiful peasant, and takes a deep interest in all that concerns her.”

Why did Juliet’s cheek at that moment grow so very pale?  Why did she sigh so deeply, and suddenly drop a conversation which she had commenced with such an apparent concern for the person who had formed the subject of it?  Love may have its joys, but oh, how painfully are they contrasted with its doubts and fears!  She had suffered the serpent of jealousy to coil around her heart, and for the first time felt its envenomed sting.  When Anthony returned to his seat he found his fair companion unusually cold and reserved.  A few minutes after, she complained of sudden indisposition, and left the room, and she did not return that evening.

That night, Juliet wept herself to sleep.  “Is it not evident,” she said to herself, “that this poor Mary is in love with Anthony Hurdlestone, and can I be base enough to add another pang to a heart already deeply wounded, by endeavoring to gain his affections?  No.  I will from this hour banish him from my thoughts, and never make him the subject of these waking dreams again.”

But alas! for good resolutions.  She found the task more difficult than she had imagined.  She could not obliterate the image stamped by the power of love upon her heart.  Like the lion, she struggled in the net, without the aid of the friendly mouse to set her free.  She wished that she had never seen him—­had never heard the rich tones of his mellow voice, or suffered the glance of his dark serious eyes to penetrate to her soul.  Ah!  Juliet, well mayest thou toss to and fro in thy troubled slumbers; thy lover is more miserable than thou, for he cannot sleep.  Indignant at the insult he had received in so unprovoked a manner from his ungenerous cousin, and at war with himself, Anthony Hurdlestone paced his chamber during the greater part of the night—­striking his breast against the fetters that bound him, and striving in vain to be free.  The very idea, that he was the son of the miser—­that he must blush for his father whenever his name was mentioned, was not the least of his annoyances.

Was it possible that a girl of Juliet Whitmore’s poetic temperament could love the son of such a man? and as he pressed his hands against his aching brow, and asked himself the question, he wished that he had been the son of the poorest peasant upon the rich man’s vast estates.  Anthony did not appear at the breakfast-table, and when he did leave his chamber and joined the family party at dinner, he met Godfrey, who had just returned from Captain Whitmore’s, his handsome countenance glowing with health and pleasure.