her finger in haste, she perceived it was a mourning-ring.


_IV.--Outcasts_


Alas! in seventeen years the beautiful, beloved Miss Milner was no
longer beautiful, no longer beloved, no longer virtuous.

Dorriforth, the pious, the good, the tender Dorriforth, was become a
hard-hearted tyrant.

Miss Woodley had grown old, but less with years than grief.

The boy Harry Rushbrook had become a man and the apparent heir of Lord
Elmwood's fortune, while his own daughter, his only child by his
once-adored Miss Milner, he refused ever to see again, in vengeance to
her mother's crime.

Sandford alone remained much as heretofore.

Lady Elmwood was a loved and loving bride seventeen years ago; now she
lay on her death-bed. At thirty-five "her course was run." After four
years of perfect happiness, Lord Elmwood was obliged to leave his wife
and child while he went to visit his large estates in the West Indies.
His voyage was tedious, his return delayed by serious illness, which a
too cautious fear of her uneasiness prompted him to conceal. He was away
three years.

It was no other than Lord Frederick Lawnly to whom Lady Elmwood