he companionship of Ellen Carley. This warm-hearted
outspoken country girl had taken a fancy to Mr. Holbrook's beautiful wife
from the hour of her arrival at the Grange, one cheerless March evening,
and had attached herself to Marian from that moment with unalterable
affection and fidelity. The girl's own life at the Grange had been lonely
enough, except during the brief summer months, when the roomy old house
was now and then enlivened a little by the advent of a lodger,--some
stray angler in search of a secluded trout stream, or an invalid who
wanted quiet and fresh air. But in none of these strangers had Ellen ever
taken much interest. They had come and gone, and made very little
impression upon her mind, though she had helped to make their sojourn
pleasant in her own brisk cheery way.

She was twenty-one years of age, very bright-looking, if not absolutely
pretty, with dark expressive eyes, a rosy brunette complexion, and very
white teeth. The nose belonged to the inferior order of pug or snub; the
forehead was low and broad, with dark-brown hair rippling over it--hair
which seemed always wanting to escape from its neat arrangement into a
multitude of mutinous curls. She was altogether a young person whom the
admirers of the soubrette style of beauty might have found very charming;
and, secluded as her life at the Grange had been, she had already more
than one admirer.

She used to relate her love affairs to Marian Holbrook in the quiet
summer evenings, as the two sat under an old cedar in the meadow nearest
the house--a meadow which had been a lawn in the days when the Grange was
in the occupation of great folks; and was divided from a broad
terrace-walk at the back of the house by a dry grass-grown moat, with
steep sloping banks, upon which there was a wealth of primroses and
violets in the early spring. Ellen Carley told Mrs. Holbrook of her
admirers, and received sage advice from that experienced young matron,
who by-and-by confessed to her humble companion the error of her own
girlhood, and how she had jilted the most devoted and generous lover that
ever a woman could boast of.

For some months--for the bright honeymoon period of her wedded
life--Marian had been completely happy in that out-of-the-world region.
It is not to be supposed that she had done so great a wrong to Gilbert
Fenton except under the influence of a great love, or the dominion of a
nature powerful enough to subjugate her own. Both these in