wledge as Tom by his letters. Sir Austin had
him instructed in the wonders of anatomy, to restore his self-respect.

Seed-Time passed thus smoothly, and adolescence came on, and his cousin
Clare felt what it was to be of an opposite sex to him. She too was
growing, but nobody cared how she grew. Outwardly even her mother seemed
absorbed in the sprouting of the green off-shoot of the Feverel tree, and
Clare was his handmaiden, little marked by him.

Lady Blandish honestly loved the boy. She would tell him: "If I had been
a girl, I would have had you for my husband." And he with the frankness
of his years would reply: "And how do you know I would have had you?"
causing her to laugh and call him a silly boy, for had he not heard her
say she would have had him? Terrible words, he knew not then the meaning
of!

"You don't read your father's Book," she said. Her own copy was bound in
purple velvet, gilt-edged, as decorative ladies like to have holier
books, and she carried it about with her, and quoted it, and (Adrian
remarked to Mrs. Doria) hunted a noble quarry, and deliberately aimed at
him therewith, which Mrs. Doria chose to believe, and regretted her
brother would not be on his guard.

"See here," said Lady Blandish, pressing an almondy finger-nail to one of
the Aphorisms, which instanced how age and adversity must clay-enclose us
ere we can effectually resist the magnetism of any human creature in our
path. "Can you understand it, child?"

Richard informed her that when she read he could.

"Well, then, my squire," she touched his cheek and ran her fingers
through his hair, "learn as quick as you can not to be all hither and yon
with a hundred different attractions, as I was before I met a wise man to
guide me."

"Is my father very wise?" Richard asked.

"I think so," the lady emphasized her individual judgment.

"Do you--" Richard broke forth, and was stopped by a beating of his
heart.

"Do I--what?" she calmly queried.

"I was going to say, do you--I mean, I love him so much."

Lady Blandish smiled and slightly coloured.

They frequently approached this theme, and always retreated from it;
always with the same beating of heart to Richard, accompanied by the
sense of a growing mystery, which, however, did not as yet generally
disturb him.

Life was made very pleasant to him at Raynham, as it was part of Sir
Austin's principle of education that his boy should be thoroughly joyous
and happy; and wheneve