guage and strong expressions of attachment for the fatherless child would plead her excuse when she returned unsuccessful from her embassy. She will be far better where she is, too,' she decided, referring to Rachel. 'It is all nonsense his talking of bringing her up as if she was his own daughter.'

'We sha'n't see much of you now, I suppose?' remarked Miss Aggles the night before her niece's departure, as they paused for a moment at the top of the easy old-fashioned staircase, up and down which so many of the family had been carried in infancy, and borne not less tenderly to their long home.

'I will come whenever I can,' answered Mrs. Palthorpe; but though she spoke earnestly and as if she meant what she said, she knew perfectly well she never intended to enter the place again if things went as she hoped they would do.

It was the last night she should ever sleep in the room she had occupied when a girl. When she turned her back on the farm next day she should never see it more; she should not stroll again beside the river, or walk in the orchard and pluck the Jeannetton apples that were such a lovely sight

just then on the trees, or look in the moonlight up the hill, thinking of what might have been, or listen to the doves cooing in the woods and the corncrake in the meadows, watch the milkers with their pails, and hear between sleeping and waking in the dewy hours of the summer mornings the sound of the mowers sharpening their scythes and the swish-swish of the falling grass.

All old things she intended to cast behind her when she commenced leading a new life, one in which her position as a wife and mistress of a household would be recognised-when she would have done with doubt and fear and be able to speak freely, without the dread that had latterly oppressed her, dogging every word she said.

When she thought of the assured future before her, of the termination of suspense, of the certainty that she would be well provided for, she felt glad; and yet not to feel a little sorry at the idea of never seeing the old place again, she must have been less human than was the case.

For, even granting she did not care for any creature living there—and, indeed, she cared little for

any creature living anywhere save herself the things she was actually bidding farewell to were so fully part and parcel of her youth, that in saying goodbye to them she could not help feeling she was leaving behind many pleasant things which might meet her again on her way through life nevermore.

cence.

Her girlhood, the hopes and dreams it held, the freshness of her early beauty, her freedom, her innoThrough the old-fashioned house she had played, as Rachel played now; the orchard had been to her as the Garden of Eden, about which her grandfather talked often as they walked beside the river; she had made chains of daisies and dandelions sitting in the shade under the chestnut-trees; there was a swampy place in the water-meadows where she found rushes to make into parasols and butterfly-cages and swords; there was not a hedge about the farm she had not searched for birds'-nests, not a corner of the squire's plantations she had not traversed looking for peahens' eggs.

It all came back to her as she lay that night in bed, the wind softly rustling through the open windows, the stars shining in upon her just as they

used to do. Her heart was not softened, but it was sad; the loneliness of the silent country oppressed her, the solemnity of night troubled her. She could not sleep for thinking of the past and the future, wondering what the farm would be like when her grandfather died, marvelling about the changes time might produce in herself.

And she had never thought so much in all the years since he left England of her dead husband as she did that night.

'After all it was hard for him,' she thought, for the first time a feeling of pity stirring her soul. ‘It was hard for him to lose that fine place, and then his health, and then his life.'

Then his life,' the silent voices of the night seemed, in some dumb fashion, to repeat.

Some day she would have to lose her life, and lie still and quiet. Well, she hoped before it came to that she might be able to take a great deal of enjoyment out of existence.

'Of course we must all die some time,' she thought, getting up and looking out of the window at the fair landscape, half-shrouded by night's sha

dows, lying stretched below. Some go soon, and some go late;' and then, having quite decided that she would go late, that nothing ever was amiss with her, that she would live as long as her grandfather, or longer, she once more sought her pillow, and soon fell fast asleep.

She was awakened by the morning sun streaming into the room, by the voices of the reapers as they came up the lane, by the song of a thrush perched on the topmost branch of a tree near her window, by the trillings of the larks away down in the meadows, and the twittering of a hundred sparrows chattering all together on the roof. Looking out between the leaves which clustered over the window, she could see the winding river, the rich pasture-lands, the spreading cornfields she meant never to behold more.

Rising, she dressed herself hurriedly; and going softly down-stairs, opened the front door and went out into the sunshine.

'I will walk up to the hill,' she said; 'likely I shall never look on it again.'

She climbed the hill, and sauntered through the