ly. "At my age, I have been
behaving like a spoiled child. How good you are to me, General! Let me
try to make amends for my misconduct. Will you permit me?"

She took up the General's letter, without waiting for permission; tore
it to pieces, smiling pleasantly all the while; and threw the fragments
into the waste-paper basket. "As if you didn't know better than I do!"
she said, kissing him on the forehead. "Engage the man by all means."

She left the room for the second time. For the second time my uncle
looked at me in blank perplexity--and I looked back at him in the same
condition of mind. The sound of the luncheon bell was equally a relief
to both of us. Not a word more was spoken on the subject of the new
groom. His references were verified; and he entered the General's
service in three days' time.

VI.

ALWAYS careful in anything that concerned my welfare, no matter how
trifling it might be, my uncle did not trust me alone with the new
groom when he first entered our service. Two old friends of the General
accompanied me at his special request, and reported the man to be
perfectly competent and trustworthy. After that, Michael rode out with
me alone; my friends among young ladies seldom caring to accompany me,
when I abandoned the park for the quiet country roads on the north and
west of London. Was it wrong in me to talk to him on these expeditions?
It would surely have been treating a man like a brute never to take
the smallest notice of him--especially as his conduct was uniformly
respectful toward me. Not once, by word or look, did he presume on the
position which my favor permitted him to occupy.

Ought I to blush when I confess (though he was only a groom) that he
interested me?

In the first place, there was something romantic in the very blankness
of the story of his life.

He had been left, in his infancy, in the stables of a gentleman living
in Kent, near the highroad between Gravesend and Rochester. The same
day, the stable-boy had met a woman running out of the yard, pursued by
the dog. She was a stranger, and was not well-dressed. While the boy was
protecting her by chaining the dog to his kennel, she was quick enough
to place herself beyond the reach of pursuit.

The infant's clothing proved, on examination, to be of the finest linen.
He was warmly wrapped in a beautiful shawl of some foreign manufacture,
entirely unknown to all the persons present, including the master and
mistress of th