milingly contradict reports that
the young lord was to marry the young lady, before the lovers
reappeared, without the most distant idea where they had been.

After that, they could not leave off talking; they took granny into
their counsels, and she heard Isabel confess how the day-dream of her
life had been to live among the 'very good.' She smiled with humble
self-conviction of falling far beneath the standard, as she discovered
that the enthusiastic girl had found all her aspirations for 'goodness'
realized by Dynevor Terrace; and regarding it as peace, joy, and
honour, to be linked with it. The newly-found happiness, and the
effort to be worthy of it, were to bear her through all uncongenial
scenes; she had such a secret of joy that she should never repine again.

'Ah! Isabel, and what am I to do?' said James.

'You ask?' she said, smiling. 'You, who have Northwold for your home,
and live in the atmosphere I only breathe now and then?'

'Your presence is my atmosphere of life.'

'Mrs. Frost, tell him he must not talk so wrongly, so extravagantly, I
mean.'

'It may be wrong; it is not extravagant. It falls only too far short
of my feeling! What will the Terrace be without you?'

'It will not be without my thoughts. How often I shall think I see the
broad road, and the wide field, and the mountain-ash berries, that were
reddening when we came; and the canary in the window! How little my
first glance at the houses took in what they would be to me!'

And then they had to settle the haunts she was to revisit at
Beauchastel. An invitation thither was the ostensible cause of the
rapid break-up from the House Beautiful; but the truth was not so
veiled but that there were many surmises among the uninitiated. Jane
had caught something from my young Lord's demeanour which certified
her, and made her so exceedingly proud and grand, that, though she was
too honourable to breathe a word of her discovery, she walked with her
kind old head three inches higher; and, as a great favour, showed
Charlotte a piece of poor dear Master Henry's bridecake, kept for luck,
and a little roll of treasured real Brussels lace, that she had saved
to adorn her cap whenever Mr. James should marry.

Charlotte was not absolutely as attentive as she might have been to
such interesting curiosities. She had one eye towards the window all
the time; she wanted to be certified how deeply she had wounded the
hero of the barricade, and sh