be a man of intrigue and afraid of no falsehoods in his intrigues—­a dangerous man, who might perhaps now and again do a generous thing, but one who would expect payment for his generosity.  Besides, had he not been named openly as her lover?  She wrote to him, therefore, as follows:  “Lady Ongar presents her compliments to Count Pateroff and finds it to be out of her power to see him at present.”  This answer the visitor took and walked away from the front door without showing any disgust to the servant, either by his demeanor or in his countenance.  On that evening she received from him a long letter, written at the neighboring inn, expostulating with her as to her conduct toward him, and saying in the last line, that it was “impossible now that they should be strangers to each other.”  “Impossible that we should be strangers,” she said almost out aloud.  “Why impossible?  I know no such impossibility.”  After that she carefully burned both the letter and the note.

She remained at Ongar Park something over six weeks, and then, about the beginning of May, she went back to London.  No one had been to see her, except Mr. Sturm, the clergyman of the parish; and he, though something almost approaching to an intimacy had sprung up between them, had never yet spoken to her of his wife.  She was not quite sure whether her rank might not deter him—­whether under such circumstances as those now in question, the ordinary social rules were not ordinarily broken—­whether a countess should not call on a clergyman’s wife first, although the countess might be the stranger; but she did not dare to do as she would have done, had no blight attached itself to her name.  She gave, therefore, no hint; she said no word of Mrs. Sturm, though her heart was longing for a kind word from some woman’s mouth.  But she allowed herself to feel no anger against the husband, and went through her parish work, thanking him for his assistance.

Of Mr. Giles she had seen very little, and since her misfortune with Enoch Gubby, she had made no further attempt to interfere with the wages of the persons employed.  Into the houses of some of the poor she had made her way, but she fancied that they were not glad to see her.  They might, perhaps, have all heard of her reputation, and Gubby’s daughter may have congratulated herself that there was another in the parish as bad as herself, or perhaps, happily, worse.  The owner of all the wealth around strove to make Mrs. Button become a messenger of charity between herself and some of the poor; but Mrs. Button altogether declined the employment, although, as her mistress had ascertained, she herself performed her own little missions of charity with zeal.  Before the fortnight was over, Lady Ongar was sick of her house and her park, utterly disregardful of her horses and oxen, and unmindful even of the pleasant stream which in these Spring days rippled softly at the bottom of her gardens.