On the eventful night which had been passed by the earl and his companions above the clouds, the mourners in the vicarage had known but little of repose. If oblivion came, it was in brief troubled snatches of slumber, from which the fevered sleeper awakes with a start to feel an icy oppression on the mind,—slumber which has in it nothing of refreshment.

All arose very early, with a vague yearning hope that tidings might come with the morning light, and the eager greeting when two of that anxious household met together was always, “Have you heard?—are there any tidings?”

Annabella would not appear at the breakfast table. Ida, pale as sculptured marble, scarcely able to swallow the nourishment of which she partook as a duty, sat beside her father, every sense absorbed in anxious listening. She heard the postman’s step before she could see his form, and eagerly sprang forward to meet him, for it was possible—just possible—that he might be the bearer of news!

The man shook his head sadly when questioned; he had brought nothing but a parcel for the Countess of Dashleigh with the London post-mark upon it; and, with a sickening sense of disappointment, Ida bore it to the room of her cousin.

A strange gleam of hope flashed in the countess’s large hollow eyes, as, without noticing the post-mark, she tore open the little packet; it was followed by a strange revulsion of feeling. There lay before her, beautiful in its fanciful binding of violet and gold, its glittering edges bright from the hand of the gilder, “The Fairy Lake, by the Countess of Dashleigh.”

There was a time when the youthful authoress would have gazed on the volume with delight, and turned over its pages with eager curiosity and pleasure! But now—there seemed written upon each a tale of wilful rebellion and insolent pride! Annabella flung her first book from her with an exclamation of anguish, for was it not connected in her mind with the fearful fate of her husband!

Then, with a sudden resolution, she rose from her seat, and hastily opened that desk at which she had penned her fatal article for the —— Magazine. Annabella would make some reparation, such reparation as yet was possible, for the deed so deeply repented of. The countess wrote, with a hand that shook so that she could scarcely form the letters, a note to her publisher in London, bidding him at once cancel the whole edition of her romance, prohibiting him from selling a single copy of the work which he had been hurrying through the press, and making herself responsible for his losses, whatever they might be. No earthly consideration would have induced the miserable wife to delay, even for an hour, the act by which she crushed the bud of hope, so long eagerly fostered, at the very moment when it burst into blossom! The young authoress, once soaring so high in the pride of literary ambition, was cutting the cords of her balloon!

Almost every family in the neighbourhood, whether rich or poor, called at the vicarage that day, impelled by friendship, curiosity, or pity, to inquire if any tidings of the lost balloon had reached the family of the Aumerles. No visitors, however, were admitted, as soon as it was ascertained that they had come to receive information, and not to give it. The sound of wheels, and of frequent rings at the gate, almost drove Annabella to distraction! Ida and her father spent much of the time together in fervent prayer, but the miserable Countess of Dashleigh seemed too restless—too wretched to pray!

It was now the afternoon of one of the loveliest days in the loveliest of seasons. The soft tinkling of the distant sheep-bell, the low of the cattle in the meadow, and the monotonous hum of the bee, came softly blended together to the ear. The bright mantle of sunshine fell on fruit-trees laden with blossom,—the hawthorn white with May’s perfumed snow, the fragrant lilac, the laburnum dropping its showers of gold! Annabella gazed from the open casement of her apartment upon a lovely and varied prospect, but she had not the slightest perception of what lay directly before her eye.

Another loud ring! The countess turned her head with quick impatience. A man was standing at the gate. Was there something in his manner that announced the eager bearer of tidings, or did the wife intuitively grasp the fact that he brought her news of her husband? Ida seemed to have had the same perception, for, with the breeze waving back her long dark tresses, she was at the gate almost before the tongue of the bell ceased to vibrate. Annabella saw her start, caught the uttered exclamation, and springing from her room, clearing the stairs almost at a bound, in less than a minute was at the side of her cousin. She was quickly followed by the vicar and Mrs. Aumerle, and every member of the household.

A telegraphic message had arrived from Augustine; yes, there was the precious little leaf, which, like the touch of a magician’s wand, changed the face of everything around, and flooded the dry, haggard cheek of sorrow with a torrent of grateful tears.

“Brain fever!” exclaimed the countess with a gasp.

“Temporary illness, I trust,—only temporary,” said the vicar, from whose heart the weight of a mountain seemed removed. “Augustine, thoughtful as he ever is, has already taken every human means to insure recovery.”

“My Reginald shall be left to no nurse; no, no, none shall rob me of one privilege,” cried Annabella. “I will be at B—— beside him to-night.”

“I will be your escort,” said Lawrence Aumerle.

“Oh, take me too!” exclaimed Ida, her dark eyes swimming in tears at the thought of seeing her sister.

“No, no,” interrupted Mrs. Aumerle, “numbers are by no means desirable where a man in brain fever is concerned. It is bad enough for your father to have to undertake a long journey, without the whole family hurrying off. You will stay here with me, my dear, and welcome back Mabel to-morrow.”

A short time before Ida would have rebelled against a decision so much at variance with her inclinations,—would have remonstrated, or at least have murmured; but she had received too severe a lesson for its impression to be speedily effaced, and reproaching herself for the sigh which alone betrayed her disappointment, she hastened up-stairs to prepare a little parcel of necessaries to be taken to Mabel.

As Ida was putting up, with other articles, the Bible which she knew that her sister would especially welcome, she was unexpectedly joined by Mrs. Aumerle.

“You may leave that business to me,” said the lady, with more real kindness of intention than tenderness of manner; “your father says that it would be hard not to let you make one of the party, so you had better get ready for the journey at once.”

Joyful at the permission, Ida hastened to make her little preparations; and Mrs. Aumerle, as she packed Mabel’s parcel, informed her step-daughter of the arrangements which she had herself made for the convenience of all. A messenger had been promptly despatched to the nearest neighbour who kept a carriage, to ask the loan of the conveyance to carry the travellers to the nearest railway station. Nothing that could insure the comfort of the vicar was forgotten when his carpet-bag was packed by the hands of his careful wife; Ida received sundry injunctions to watch over the health of her father, and the good housewife took care that the travellers should not fast on the way.

When the carriage drove away from the door of the vicarage, with its eager, anxious occupants, Mrs. Aumerle, following it to the gate, watched it from thence till it disappeared in a turn of the road. And thus the woman of sense soliloquised on events, past, present, and future:—

“How much trouble and misery has been caused by one act of selfish folly! Because Augustine—too great a genius, I suppose, to judge like a sensible man—fancies to roam through the clouds, and take with him a wilful, disobedient child, while a petulant girl eggs on her husband to follow so absurd an example, a whole family must be plunged into terror, grief, and alarm! I felt convinced from the first that all would end happily enough. Augustine has easily guided the balloon; it has floated quietly down at its leisure to some quiet meadow in Devon; and but for the poor earl’s shaken nerves, the whole affair to those most concerned has been nothing but a party of pleasure! It is we who have had to suffer for the senseless folly of others. There’s Ida has been looking like a spectre; and my dear, excellent husband is first almost crushed with sorrow, and then hurried off, at half-an-hour’s notice, to escort that half frantic countess to a husband who will probably refuse to see her! Well, well, I believe that of all senses common sense is the most uncommon!” and with a soothing conviction that a portion, at least, of the rare gift had been bestowed upon herself, Mrs. Aumerle quietly returned to her usual avocations.

It was fortunate for Mabel that the morrow’s post brought to her stepmother’s hands the letter which the young girl had dropped from the balloon. Ida had left a request, that notes addressed to her might in her absence be opened by Mrs. Aumerle, and thus it was that that lady first became aware of some of the perils through which the travellers had passed. Mabel’s letter had been picked up in a field and posted by the farmer who had found it, and the touching lines of love and penitence which she had penned in the near prospect of a terrible death, softened in a very great degree the feelings of her step-mother towards her.

“She has had her share of suffering after all,” observed the lady, “and we must not be severe upon the poor child. She has had punishment enough for her fault, so I’m content to ‘let bygones be bygones.’”