head at the aggrieved lover, opened the glass
door and looked up and down the terrace. " You
are a good seeker but a bad finder, Jack ; they
are not in sight, therefore they must be in the
Wilderness," said he.

"Or in the wood or the Lower Copse,"
responded Jack, shortly.

"In the wood or the Lower Copse! What
should they do there at dusk, or what should
they do in the Lower Copse at all?" The squire
was evidently annoyed at the suggestion; he
looked out on the terrace again, and then went
back into the drawing-room and rang the bell.
The ancient butler answered it. " Bring tea,
and send Joliffe to seek the young ladies. Most
likely they are in the gardens or the Wilderness,"
said his master.

Jack heard the order and the directions, but
he did not interfere. The servant said, "Yes,
sir," with perfect respect of tone and composure
of feature, but as soon as he was on the other
side of the drawing-room door his expression
changed, and he muttered sarcastically to
himself, " She's a queer sort of young woman is
that Miss Wharton. I'll go and seek 'em
myself; I'll not send Joliffe. He has a tongue
as long as to-day and to-morrow, and would be
for telling if he found out her goings on. I
wonder, for my part, how Miss Minnie can abide
her." And the butler, who had known Squire
Conyers's daughter ever since she was born,
and esteemed her the best and kindest as well
as the most beautiful of young ladies, went
stealthily out at the front door, and, as Jack
Wyvill, watching from the conservatory, saw,
struck across the lawn and the park in a direct
line towards the Lower Copse. Whatever Miss
Wharton's clandestine affairs, they were already
evidently known in the servants' hall.

Jack sat down in a mood of intense disgust
and mortification. How long he sat he never
knew, but it seemed hours before he heard swift
footsteps passing along the gravelled walk, and
then Miss Wharton saying, with suppressed
vehemence, " If you tell him, Minnie, I'll never
forgive you! What is it to him? My business
is not your business. You are not half so kind
to me as you were once." To which Minnie
replied in as pettish a tone as she could assume:
"I am not going to tell him; you need not be
afraid; but I will not steal off to the Copse any
more when Aunt Mary believes we are in the
garden. You can go alone if you like, but I
hate hide-and-seek work; and I don't know
what Bolton must think."

"That wooden-faced old butler? Oh, he will
not be so impertinent as to think at all," replied
Miss Wharton; and with these words she ran
up the steps, Minnie following close behind, and
so they entered the conservatory. They seemed
to espy Jack Wyvill simultaneously, and Minnie's
blush was painful; even Miss Wharton did not
quite succeed in keeping her countenance, but
she dissembled her confusion to the best of her
power, and observed that it was much pleasanter
out in the open air than in this atmosphere
loaded with the heavy perfumes of green-house
plants. Jack's response was utterly incoherent ;
he was no match for her coolness. He felt
galled to his very soul, and he betrayed it.
Minnie stood for a second or two uncertain and
wretched ; but as he said nothing, and made no
effort to detain her, she passed forward to the
drawing-room, where she had to encounter the
questions and admonitions of her father.

"Look at the timepiece, Minnie; twenty
minutes past nine! Where have you been?
Did you see Joliffe?" asked he, hastily.

Minnie hesitated, stammered, looked almost
frightened; but Miss Wharton came to the
rescue, and took the difficulty of judicious reply
out of her mouth. She answered with a ready
wit and a skilful evasiveness, but while she was
in the midst of her inventive exercise, Jack
Wyvill followed into the drawing-room with a
visage as black as a thunder-cloud, which did
not escape the squire's observations. His
straightforward shrewdness detected something
amiss when his open-hearted Minnie could not
give him a plain answer to a plain question, but
must stand by and let some one else be her
spokeswoman; and at that moment the fluent
Miss Wharton revolted him almost as much as
she revolted Minnie's lover.

"There is underhand business going on, and
I'll not have it: that is what Jack Wyvill has
got an inkling of," thought he. But he saw
tears in Minnie's eyes, and said no more for the
present, though it was an awful staggering shock
to him when he drew down her sweet face to
his by one of her sunny bright curls, and instead
of the flowery perfume which ordinarily scented
her golden hair, he detected the odour of smoke
– the unmistakable, undeniable fragrance of
tobacco!

During tea the squire stood on the rug, his
back to the fire, his cup in his hand, and his
observations travelling from one face to another
of the disunited party. Miss Wharton would
suffer no awkward pauses in the conversation,
and talked incessantly, Mr. Warren supporting
her, until the squire gave Jack Wyvill a hint to
accompany him to the library, when she glanced
anxiously at Minnie's dolorous countenance, and
wondered what was about to happen. The lawyer
being now left alone to amuse the ladies, exerted
himself to the best of his ability, but Miss Wharton
presently retired to take counsel within
herself. " I am afraid somebody suspects," thought
she, with genuine but well-concealed alarm. "It
is a frightful bore to be amongst such orderly,
proper people, and there is another week of it
to come! I'll write to Tom to-morrow, and
order him to recal me; he can say he has the
croup or something, and that he wants me to
nurse him. I would rather live with poor Tom
than live here, strangled with proprieties and
conventionalities. Jealous, clod-hopping noodle
that Jack Wyvill is; but Minnie is not overburdened
with wisdom herself, so they will be
equally mated. She is like a scared rabbit –
' Oh, Harry this!' ' Oh, Harry that!' as if the
very trees had eyes, and the birds of the air
could literally carry the matter! The squire is