rule yet to measure the present by except the past, and
her experience of his usage in the past did not invite her tenderness. A
reasonable and mild behavior was all she supposed to be required of her.
Anything else--whether for better or worse--would be spontaneous. She
could not affect either love or dislike, and how far she could dissemble
either she had yet to learn.

CHAPTER XX.

_PAST AND PRESENT._

The next morning Bessie was left entirely at liberty to amuse herself.
Mr. Fairfax had breakfasted alone, and was gone to Norminster before
she came down stairs. Jonquil made the communication. Bessie wondered
whether it was often so, and whether she would have to make out the
greater part of the days for herself. But she said nothing; some feeling
that she did not reason about told her that there must be no complaining
here, let the days be what they might. She wrote a long letter to Madame
Fournier, and then went out of doors, having declined Mrs. Betts's
proposed attendance.

"Where is the village?" she asked a boy who was sweeping up fallen
leaves from the still dewy lawn. He pointed her the way to go. "And the
church and parsonage?" she added.

"They be all together, miss, a piece beyond the lodge."

With an object in view Bessie could feel interested. She was going to
see her mother's home, the house where she was herself born; and on the
road she began to question whether she had any kinsfolk on her mother's
side. Mrs. Carnegie had once told her that she believed not--unless
there were descendants of her grandfather Bulmer's only brother in
America, whither he had emigrated as a young man; but she had never
heard of any. A cousin of some sort would have been most acceptable to
Bessie in her dignified isolation. She did not naturally love solitude.

The way across the park by which she had been directed brought her out
upon the high-road--a very pleasant road at that spot, with a fir wood
climbing a shallow hill opposite, bounded by a low stone fence, all
crusted with moss and lichen, age and weather.

For nearly half a mile along the roadside lay an irregular open space of
broken ground with fine scattered trees upon it, and close turf where
primroses were profuse in spring. An old woman was sitting in the shade
knitting and tending a little black cow that cropped the sweet moist
grass. Only for the sake of speaking Bessie asked again her way to the
village.

"Keep straight on, miss, you can't