een a clergyman's daughter. Before her eyes
there rose a sunny vision of imaginary life at the parsonage, with Mr
and Mrs Tremayne for her parents, Arthur and Lysken for her brother and
sister, and the whole village for her family. The story never got far
enough for any of them to marry; in fact, that would have spoilt it.
Beyond the one change of place, there were to be no further changes. No
going away; no growing old; "no cares to break the still repose," except
those of the villagers, who were to be petted and soothed and helped
into being all good and happy. Beyond that point, Clare's dream did not
go.

Let her dream on a little longer,--poor Clare! She was destined to be
rudely awakened before long.

CHAPTER SIX.

COSITAS DE ESPANA.

"On earth no word is said, I ween,
But's registered in Heaven:
What's here a jest, is there a sin
Which may never be forgiven."

Blanche Enville sat on the terrace, on a warm September afternoon, with
a half-finished square of wool-work in her hand, into which she was
putting a few stitches every now and then. She chose to imagine herself
hard at work; but it would have fatigued nobody to count the number of
rows which she had accomplished since she came upon the terrace. The
work which Blanche was really attending to was the staple occupation of
her life,--building castles in the air. At various times she had played
all manner of parts, from a captive queen, a persecuted princess, or a
duchess in disguise, down to a fisherman's daughter saving a vessel in
danger by the light in her cottage window. No one who knows how to
erect the elegant edifices above referred to, will require to be told
that whatever might be her temporary position, Blanche always acquitted
herself to perfection: and that any of the airy _dramatis personae_ who
failed to detect her consummate superiority was either compassionately
undeceived, or summarily crushed, at the close of the drama.

Are not these fantasies one of the many indications that all along
life's pathway, the old serpent is ever whispering to us his first
lie,--"Ye shall be as gods?"

At the close of a particularly sensational scene, when Blanche had just
succeeded in escaping from a convent prison wherein the wicked. Queen
her sister had confined her, the idea suddenly flashed upon the
oppressed Princess that Aunt Rachel would hardly be satisfied with the
state of the kettle-holder; and coming down in an instant f