"Twice when I was out by myself, but it frightened me so that I never looked again."

"Can you give me any guide to the time?"

She was clear that it had been after Colonel Keith's first stay at Avonmouth, but that was all, and being asked if she had ever mentioned these meetings, "Only when Colonel Keith saw how frightened I was, and asked me."

"Why were you frightened?" asked Mr. Grey, on a hint from the Colonel.

"Because I could not quite leave off believing the dreadful things Mr.

Maddox and Maria said they would do to me if I told."

"Told what?"

"About Mr. Maddox coming and walking with Maria when she was out with me," gasped Rose, trying to avert her head, and not comforted by hearing Mr. Grey repeat her words to those tormentors of her infancy.

A little encouragement, however, brought out the story of the phosphoric letters, the lions, and the vision of Maddox growling in the dressing-room. The date of the apparition could hardly be hoped for, but fortunately Rose remembered that it was two days before her mamma's birthday, because she had felt it so bard to be eaten up before the fete, and this date tallied with that given by Maria of her admitting her treacherous admirer into the private rooms.

"The young lady may be precocious, no doubt, sir," here said the accused, "but I hardly see why she has been brought here. You can attach no weight to the confused recollections of so young a child, of matters that took place so long ago."

"The question will be what weight the jury will attach to them at the assizes," said Mr. Grey.

"You will permit me to make one inquiry of the young lady, sir. Who told her whom she might expect to see here?"

Mr. Grey repeated the query, and Rose answered, "Nobody; I knew my aunt and the Colonel and Lady Temple were gone in to Avoncester, and Aunt Ermine got a note from the Colonel to say that I was to come in to him with Tibbie in a fly."

"Did you know what you were wanted for?"

"No, I could not think. I only knew they came to get the woman punished for being so cruel to the poor little girls."

"Do you know who that person was?"

"Mrs. Rawlins," was the ready answer.

"I think," said Mr. Grey to the accused, "that you must perceive that, with such coincidence of testimony as I have here, I have no alternative but to commit you for the summer assizes."

Mauleverer murmured something about an action for false imprisonment, but he did not make it clear, and he was evidently greatly crestfallen.

He had no doubt hoped to brazen out his assumed character sufficiently to disconcert Mr. Beauchamp's faith in his own memory, and though he had carried on the same game after being confronted with Maria, it was already becoming desperate. He had not reckoned upon her deserting his cause even for her own sake, and the last chance of employing her antecedents to discredit her testimony, had been overthrown by Rose's innocent witness to their mutual relations, a remembrance which had been burnt in on her childish memory by the very means taken to secure her silence. When the depositions were read over, their remarkable and independent accordance was most striking; Mrs. Dench had already been led away by the minister, in time to catch her train, just when her sobs of indignation at the deception were growing too demonstrative, and the policeman resumed the charge of Maria Hatherton.

Little Rose looked up to her, saying, "Please, Aunt Ailie, may I speak to her?"

Alison had been sitting restless and perplexed between impulses of pity and repulsion, and doubts about the etiquette of the justice room; but her heart yearned over the girl she had cherished, and she signed permission to Rose, whose timidity had given way amid excitement and encouragement.

"Please, Maria," she said, "don't be angry with me for telling; I never did till Colonel Keith asked me, and I could not help it. Will you kiss me and forgive me as you used?"

The hard fierce eyes, that had not wept over the child's coffin, filled with tears.

"Oh, Miss Rose, Miss Rose, do not come near me. Oh, if I had minded you--and your aunts--" And the pent-up misery of the life that had fallen lower and lower since the first step in evil, found its course in a convulsive sob and shriek, so grievous that Alison was thankful for Colin's promptitude in laying hold of Rose, and leading her out of the room before him. Alison felt obliged to follow, yet could not bear to leave Maria to policemen and prison warders.

"Maria, poor Maria, I am so sorry for you, I will try to come and see you--"

But her hand was seized with an imperative, "Ailie, you must come, they are all waiting for you."

How little had she thought her arm would ever be drawn into that arm, so unheeded by both.

"So that is Edward's little girl! Why, she is the sweetest little clear-headed thing I have seen a long time. She was the saving of us."

"It was well thought of by Colin."

"Colin is a lawyer spoilt--that's a fact. A first-rate get-up of a case!"

"And you think it safe now?"

"Nothing safer, so Edward turns up. How he can keep away from such a child as that, I can't imagine. Where is she? Oh, here--" as they came into the porch in fuller light, where the Colonel and Rose waited for them. "Ha, my little Ailie, I must make better friends with you."

"My name is Rose, not Ailie," replied the little girl.

"Oh, aye! Well, it ought to have been, what d'ye call her--that was a Daniel come to judgment?"

"Portia," returned Rose; "but I don't think that is pretty at all."

"And where is Lady Temple?" anxiously asked Alison. "She must be grieved to be detained so long."

"Oh! Lady Temple is well provided for," said the Colonel, "all the magistrates and half the bar are at her feet. They say the grace and simplicity of her manner of giving her evidence were the greatest contrast to poor Rachel's."

"But where is she?" still persisted Alison.

"At the hotel; Maria's was the last case of the day, and she went away directly after it, with such a choice of escorts that I only just spoke to her."

And at the hotel they found the waggonette at the gateway, and Lady Temple in the parlour with Sir Edward Morden, who, late as it was, would not leave her till he had seen her with the rest of the party. She sprang up to meet them, and was much relieved to hear that Mauleverer was again secured. "Otherwise," she said, "it would have been all my fault for having acted without asking advice. I hope I shall never do so again."

She insisted that all should go home together in the waggonette, and Rose found herself upon Mr. Beauchamp's knee, serving as usual as a safety valve for the feelings of her aunt's admirers. There was no inconstancy on her part, she would much have preferred falling to the lot of her own Colonel, but the open carriage drive was rather a risk for him in the night air, and though he had undertaken it in the excitement, he soon found it requisite to muffle himself up, and speak as little as possible. Harry Beauchamp talked enough for both. He was in high spirits, partly, as Colin suspected, with the escape from a dull formal home, and partly with the undoing of a wrong that had rankled in his conscience more than he had allowed to himself. Lady Temple, her heart light at the convalescence of her sons, was pleased with everything, liked him extremely, and answered gaily; and Alison enjoyed the resumption of pleasant habits of days gone by. Yet, delightful as it all was, there was a sense of disenchantment: she was marvelling all the time how she could have suffered so much on Harry Beauchamp's account.

The rejection of him had weighed like a stone upon her heart, but now it seemed like freedom to have escaped his companionship for a lifetime.

Presently a horse's feet were heard on the road before them; there was a meeting and a halt, and Alick Keith's voice called out--"How has it gone?"

"Why, were you not in court?"

"What! I go to hear my friends baited!"

"Where were you then?"

"At Avonmouth."

"Oh, then you have seen the boys," cried Lady Temple. "How is Conrade?"

"Quite himself. Up to a prodigious amount of indoor croquet. But how has it gone?"

"Such a shame!" returned Lady Temple. "They acquitted the dreadful man, and the poor woman, whom he drove to it, has a year's imprisonment and hard labour!"