rinciple which she recognised in
Charlotte, amid much that she could not fathom, and set down
alternately to the score of scholarship and youth.

Taste, modesty, and timidity were guards to Charlotte. A broad stare
was terror to her, and she had many a fictitious horror, as well as
better-founded ones. Truly she said, she hated the broad words Martha
had used. One who craved a true knight to be twitted with a
sweetheart! Martha and Tom Madison were almost equally distasteful, as
connected with such a reproach; and the little maiden drew into
herself, promenaded her fancy in castles and tournaments, kept under
Jane's wing, and was upheld by her as a sensible, prudent girl.

CHAPTER II.

AN OLD SCHOOLMISTRESS.

I praise thee, matron, and thy due
Is praise, heroic praise and true;
With admiration I behold
Thy gladness unsubdued and bold.
Thy looks and gestures all present
The picture of a life well spent;
Our human nature throws away
Its second twilight and looks gay.
WORDSWORTH.

Unconscious of Charlotte's flight and Tom's affront, the Earl of
Ormersfield rode along Dynevor Terrace--a row of houses with handsome
cemented fronts, tragic and comic masks alternating over the downstairs
windows, and the centre of the block adorned with a pediment and
colonnade; but there was an air as if something ailed the place: the
gardens were weedy, the glass doors hazy, the cement stained and
scarred, and many of the windows closed and dark, like eyes wanting
speculation, or with merely the dreary words 'To be let' enlivening
their blank gloom. At the house where Charlotte had vanished, he drew
his rein, and opened the gate--not one of the rusty ones--he entered
the garden, where all was trim and fresh, the shadow of the house lying
across the sward, and preserving the hoar-frost, which, in the
sunshine, was melting into diamond drops on the lingering China roses.

Without ring or knock, he passed into a narrow, carpetless vestibule,
unadorned except by a beautiful blue Wedgewood vase, and laying down
hat and whip, mounted the bare staircase, long since divested of all
paint or polish. Avoiding the door of the principal room, he opened
another at the side, and stood in a flood of sunshine, pouring in from
the window, which looked over all the roofs of the town, to the
coppices and moorlands of Ormersfield. On the bright fire sung a
kettle, a white cat purred on the h