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48 never been known to countenance the attentions of any man, either in her own station or a higher; nor was it suspected that any of the latter class were in pursuit of her. Andrew Hopley was the most favoured, or rather, the least disdained of her admirers; and even to him she had never shown any thing that amounted to encouragement.

Conjecture was therefore at a fault; and no one could suggest any probable solution of the mystery, as hour after hour passed, and the messengers that had been sent in search of her returned, and brought no tidings.

One circumstance recurred to Susan's mind, but it seemed almost too vague and unimportant to draw any conclusions from, and therefore she made no mention of it. It was, that on the night the man with the crooked nose had rung at the back-door, she had heard Mabel in conversation with some one as she passed her room; it was as she was returning to the kitchen after she had been up to look at her fires, and consequently not many minutes after she had seen him. The voice was that of a man; she thought nothing of it at the time, concluding it was some member of the family; but it now occurred to her that the stranger's saying he could not find his way, (in which