"For it is Aunt Emily's money he wants--not me;" she said to herself--"He doesn't care a jot about me personally--any woman will do, provided she has the millions. And when he knows I've given up the millions, and don't intend ever to have the millions, he'll leave me alone. And he'll go over to America in search of somebody else--some proud daughter of oil or pork or steel!--and what a blessing that will be!"

Meanwhile, such brief excitement as had been caused in St. Rest by the return of 'th' owld Squire's gel' and by the almost simultaneous dismissal of Oliver Leach, had well-nigh abated. A new agent had been appointed, and though Leach had left the immediate vicinity, having employment on Sir Morton Pippitt's lands, he had secured a cottage for himself in the small outlying hamlet of Badsworth. He also undertook some work for the Reverend 'Putty' Leveson in assisting him to form an entomological collection for the private museum at Badsworth Hall. Mr. Leveson had a singular fellow-feeling for insects,--he studied their habits, and collected specimens of various kinds in bottles, or 'pinned' them on cardboard trays,--he was an interested observer of the sprightly manners practised by the harvest-bug, and the sagacious customs of the ruminating spider,--as well as the many surprising and agreeable talents developed by the common flea.

Leach's virulent hatred of Maryllia Vancourt was not lessened by the apparently useful and scientific nature of the employment he had newly taken up under the guidance of his reverend instructor,--and whenever he caught a butterfly and ran his murderous pin through its quivering body at Leveson's bland command, he thought of her, and wished vindictively that she might perish as swiftly and utterly as the winged lover of the flowers. Every small bright thing in Nature's garden that he slew and brought home as trophy, inspired him with the same secret fierce desire. The act of killing a beautiful or harmless creature gave him pleasure, and he did not disguise it from himself. The Reverend 'Putty' was delighted with his aptitude, and with the many valuable additions he made to the 'specimen' cards and bottles, and the two became constant companions in their search for fresh victims among the blossoming hedgerows and fields. St. Rest, as a village, was only too glad to be rid of Leach's long detested presence to care anything at all as to his further occupations or future career,--and only Bainton kept as he said 'an eye on him.'