d and come home. She was now staying with some old friends in
Westmoreland, almost restored to her wonted health and gaiety.

When Colonel Mannering reached the house he found his old acquaintance
paralysed, helpless, waiting for the postchaise to take him away.
Mannering's evident emotion at once attained him the confidence of Lucy
Bertram. The laird showed no signs of recognising Mannering; but when
the man, Gilbert Glossin, who had brought him to this pass, had the
effrontery to make his appearance, he started up, violently reproaching
him, sank into his chair again, and died almost without a groan.

A torrent of sympathy now poured forth, the sale was postponed, and
Mannering decided on making a short tour till it should take place, but
he was called back to Westmoreland, and, owing to the delay of his
messenger, the estate passed into the hands of Glossin. Lucy and Dominie
Sampson, who would not be separated from his pupil, found a temporary
home in the house of Mr. MacMorlan, the sheriff-substitute, a good
friend of the family.

Colonel Mannering lost no time in hiring for a season a large and
comfortable mansion not far from Ellangowan, having some hopes of
ultimately buying that estate. Besides a sincere desire to serve the
distressed, he saw the advantage his daughter Julia might receive from
the company of Lucy Bertram, whose prudence and good sense might be
relied on, and therefore induced her to become the visitor of a season,
and the dominie thereupon required no pressing to accept the office of
librarian. The household was soon settled in its new quarters, and the
young ladies followed their studies and amusements together.

Society was quickly formed, most of the families in the neighbourhood
visited Colonel Mannering, and Charles Hazlewood soon held a
distinguished place in his favour and was a frequent visitor, his
parents quite forgetting their old fear of his boyish attachment to
penniless Lucy Bertram in the thought that the beautiful Miss Mannering,
of high family, with a great fortune, was a prize worth looking after.
They did not know that the colonel's journey to Westmoreland was in
consequence of a letter from his friend there expressing uneasiness
about serenades from the lake beside the house. However, he had returned
without making any discovery or any advance in his daughter's
confidence, who might have told him that Brown still lived, had not her
natural good sense and feeling been warpe