h the dullards had called Idiotcy, had been the wild
efforts, not of Folly, but of GENIUS seeking to find its path and outlet
from the cold and dreary solitude to which the circumstances of her
early life had compelled it.

Days, even weeks, passed--she never spoke of Vaudemont. And once, when
Sarah, astonished and bewildered by the change in her young mistress,
asked:

"When does the gentleman come back?"

Fanny answered, with a mysterious smile, "Not yet, I hope,--not quite
yet!"

CHAPTER IX.

"Thierry. I do begin
To feel an alteration in my nature,
And in his full-sailed confidence a shower
Of gentle rain, that falling on the fire
Hath quenched it.

How is my heart divided
Between the duty of a son and love!"
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER: Thierry and Theodorat.

Vaudemont had now been a month at Beaufort Court. The scene of a
country-house, with the sports that enliven it, and the accomplishments
it calls forth, was one in which he was well fitted to shine. He
had been an excellent shot as a boy; and though long unused to the
fowling-piece, had, in India, acquired a deadly precision with the
rifle; so that a very few days of practice in the stubbles and covers of
Beaufort Court made his skill the theme of the guests and the admiration
of the keepers. Hunting began, and--this pursuit, always so strong a
passion in the active man, and which, to the turbulence and agitation of
his half-tamed breast, now excited by a kind of frenzy of hope and fear,
gave a vent and release--was a sport in which he was yet more fitted to
excel. His horsemanship, his daring, the stone walls he leaped and the
floods through which he dashed, furnished his companions with wondering
tale and comment on their return home. Mr. Marsden, who, with some other
of Arthur's early friends, had been invited to Beaufort Court, in order
to welcome its expected heir, and who retained all the prudence which
had distinguished him of yore, when having ridden over old Simon he
dismounted to examine the knees of his horse;--Mr. Marsden, a skilful
huntsman, who rode the most experienced horses in the world, and who
generally contrived to be in at the death without having leaped over
anything higher than a hurdle, suffering the bolder quadruped (in case
what is called the "knowledge of the country"--that is, the knowledge of
gaps and gates--failed him) to perform the more dangerous feats