gradually to ooze out, but the greater portion both of domestics and
garrison continued firm in the belief that she had been carried off
by Satan. Young Delaware, indeed, who had been revelling late--I
mean in the chapel with the organ--and who was always the more
inclined to believe a thing the stranger it was, asserted that he
SAW devil fly away with her--a testimony which gained as much in one
way as it lost in another by the fact that he could not see at all.

To Scudamore her absence, however caused, was only a relief. She had
ceased to interest him, while Dorothy had become to him like an
enchanted castle, the spell of which he flattered himself he was the
knight born to break. All his endeavours, however, to attract from
her a single look such as indicated intelligence, not to say
response, were disappointed. She seemed absolutely unsuspicious of
what he sought, neither, having so long pretermitted what claim he
might once have established to cousinly relations with her, could he
now initiate any intimacy on that ground. Had she become an inmate
of Raglan immediately after he first made her acquaintance, that
might have ripened to something more hopeful; but when she came she
was in sorrow, nor felt that there was any comfort in him, while he
was beginning to yield to the tightening bonds mistress Amanda had
flung around him. Nor since had he afforded her any ground for
altering her first impressions, or favourably modifying a feature of
the portrait lady Margaret had presented of him.

Strange to say, however, poorly grounded as was the orignal interest
he had taken in her, and little as he was capable of understanding
her, he soon began, even while yet confident in his proved
advantages of person and mind and power persuasive, to be vaguely
wrought upon by the superiority of her nature. With this the