ks after their marriage they arrived at Rawdon Court. It
was on a day and at an hour when no one was looking for them, and
they stepped into the lovely home waiting for them without outside
observation. Hiring a carriage at the railway station, they dismissed it
at the little bridge near the Manor House, and sauntered happily through
the intervening space. The door of the great hall stood open, and the
fire, which had been burning on its big hearth unquenched for more
than three hundred years, was blazing merrily, as if some hand had just
replenished it. On the long table the broad, white beaver hat of the
dead Squire was lying, and his oak walking stick was beside it. No one
had liked to remove them. They remained just as he had put them down,
that last, peaceful morning of his life.

In a few minutes the whole household was aware of their home-coming, and
before the day was over the whole neighborhood. Then there was no way
of avoiding the calls, the congratulations, and the entertainments
that followed, and the old Court was once more the center of a splendid
hospitality. Of course the Tyrrel-Rawdons were first on the scene, and
Ethel was genuinely glad to meet again the good-natured Mrs. Nicholas.
No one could give her better local advice, and Ethel quickly discovered
that the best general social laws require a local interpretation. Her
hands were full, her heart full, she had so many interests to share, so
many people to receive and to visit, and yet when two weeks passed and
Dora neither came nor wrote she was worried and dissatisfied.

"Are the Mostyns at the Hall?" she asked Mrs. Nicholas at last. "I have
been expecting Mrs. Mostyn every day, but she neither comes nor writes
to me."

"I dare say not. Poor little woman! I'll warrant she has been forbid to
do either. If Mostyn thought she wanted to see you, he would watch day
and night to prevent her coming. He's turning out as cruel a man as his
father was, and you need not say a word worse than that."

"Cruel! Oh, dear, how dreadful! Men will drink and cheat and swear, but
a cruel man seems so unnatural, so wicked."

"To be sure, cruelty is the joy of devils. As I said to John Thomas when
we heard about Mostyn's goings-on, we have got rid of the Wicked One,
but the wicked still remain with us."

This conversation having been opened, was naturally prolonged by the
relation of incidents which had come through various sources to Mrs.
Rawdon's ears, all of the