d even while he was speaking), and
probably also his secluded life. Was it fair to force him, by virtue of
his inborn kindness and courtesy, to come out of his privileges and deal
with me, who could not altogether be in any place a mere nobody? And so
I refused his offer.

"I am very much obliged to you indeed," I said, "but I think you might
be sorry for it. I will come and stop with you every now and then, when
your health is better, and you ask me. But to live here altogether would
not do; I should like it too well, and do nothing else."

"Perhaps you are right," he replied, with the air of one who cares
little for any thing, which is to me the most melancholy thing, and
worse than any distress almost; "you are very young, my dear, and years
should be allowed to pass before you know what full-grown sorrow is. You
have had enough, for your age, of it. You had better not live in this
house; it is not a house for cheerfulness."

"Then if I must neither live here nor at Bruntsea," I asked, with sudden
remonstrance, feeling as if every body desired to be quit of me or to
worry me, "to what place in all the world am I to go, unless it is back
to America? I will go at once to Shoxford, and take lodgings of my own."

"Perhaps you had better wait a little while," Lord Castlewood answered,
gently, "although I would much rather have you at Shoxford than where
you are at present. But please to remember, my good Erema, that you can
not go to Shoxford all alone. I have a most faithful and trusty man--the
one who opened the door to you. He has been here before his remembrance.
He disdains me still as compared with your father. Will you have him to
superintend you? I scarcely see how you can do any good, but if you do
go, you must go openly, and as your father's daughter."

"I have no intention whatever of going in any other way, Lord
Castlewood; but perhaps," I continued, "it would be as well to make as
little stir as possible. Of an English village I know nothing but the
little I have seen at Bruntsea, but there they make a very great fuss
about any one who comes down with a man-servant."

"To be sure," replied my cousin, with a smile; "they would not be true
Britons otherwise. Perhaps you would do better without Stixon; but of
course you must not go alone. Could you by any means persuade your old
nurse Betsy to go with you?"

"How good of you to think of it!--how wise you are!" I really could not
help saying, as I gazed at