It happened, however, that on that day there was no escaped felon about to watch what they had done, and the food and the drink had been found secure.

Nora had gone off, and as her sister and Priscilla sat leaning against their hillocks with their backs to the road, she could be seen standing now on one little eminence and now on another, thinking, doubtless, as she stood on the one how good it would be to be Lady Peterborough, and, as she stood on the other, how much better to be Mrs.Hugh Stanbury.

Only,--before she could be Mrs.Hugh Stanbury it would be necessary that Mr.Hugh Stanbury should share her opinion,--and necessary also that he should be able to maintain a wife.

"I should never do to be a very poor man's wife," she said to herself; and remembered as she said it, that in reference to the prospect of her being Lady Peterborough, the man who was to be Lord Peterborough was at any rate ready to make her his wife, and on that side there were none of those difficulties about house, and money, and position which stood in the way of the Hugh Stanbury side of the question.

She was not, she thought, fit to be the wife of a very poor man; but she conceived of herself that she would do very well as a future Lady Peterborough in the drawing-rooms of Monkhams.