‘We will hurry to our carriage,’ she said.

They were seen to make a little circuit so as not to approach Rose; after whom, thoughtless of his cruelty, Evan bent his steps slowly, halting when she reached her carriage.  He believed—­rather, he knew that she had seen him.  There was a consciousness in the composed outlines of her face as she passed:  the indifference was too perfect.  Let her hate him if she pleased.  It recompensed him that the air she wore should make her appearance more womanly; and that black dress and crape-bonnet, in some way, touched him to mournful thoughts of her that helped a partial forgetfulness of wounded self.

Rose had driven off.  He was looking at the same spot, where Caroline’s hand waved from her carriage.  Juliana was not seen.  Caroline requested her to nod to him once, but she would not.  She leaned back hiding her eyes, and moving a petulant shoulder at Caroline’s hand.

‘Has he offended you, my child?’

Juliana answered harshly: 

‘No-no.’

The wheels rolled on, and Caroline tried other subjects, knowing possibly that they would lead Juliana back to this of her own accord.

‘You saw how she treated him?’ the latter presently said, without moving her hand from before her eyes.

‘Yes, dear.  He forgives her, and will forget it.’

‘Oh!’ she clenched her long thin hand, ’I pray that I may not die before I have made her repent it.  She shall!’

Juliana looked glitteringly in Caroline’s face, and then fell a-weeping, and suffered herself to be folded and caressed.  The storm was long subsiding.

‘Dearest! you are better now?’ said Caroline.

She whispered:  ‘Yes.’

‘My brother has only to know you, dear—­’

‘Hush!  That’s past.’  Juliana stopped her; and, on a deep breath that threatened to break to sobs, she added in a sweeter voice than was common to her, ‘Ah, why—­why did you tell him about the Beckley property?’

Caroline vainly strove to deny that she had told him.  Juliana’s head shook mournfully at her; and now Caroline knew what Juliana meant when she begged so earnestly that Evan should be kept ignorant of her change of fortune.

Some days after this the cold struck Juliana’s chest, and she sickened.  The three sisters held a sitting to consider what it was best to do with her.  Caroline proposed to take her to Beckley without delay.  Harriet was of opinion that the least they could do was to write to her relatives and make them instantly aware of her condition.

But the Countess said ‘No,’ to both.  Her argument was, that Juliana being independent, they were by no means bound to ‘bundle’ her, in her state, back to a place where she had been so shamefully maltreated:  that here she would live, while there she would certainly die:  that absence of excitement was her medicine, and that here she had it.  Mrs. Andrew, feeling herself responsible