n the carpet.

"What can all this mean," she reflected. "The General has not been to
see me since the first day of my illness; then the half insolent air of
this girl--the discharge of my old servant, what can it mean?"

"More 'an this," continued Ben, warming up, "Nelly the chambermaid is a
going. She says that things don't suit her, and she's got too many
mistresses, by half, for her money!"

"This is very strange," said Mabel, rising with that firm moral courage,
which always prompted her to face a difficulty at once. "Say to the
General, that I wish to speak with him."

"The General isn't at home Mar'm, and hasn't been since yesterday."

"Very well, Benson, I shall dine with the family; a household always
goes wrong when its mistress is away."

"And shall I cook these beauties for you?" inquired Ben, gathering up
the moist leaves, and laying them over the trout again, with pleasant
alacrity; "the new cook mayn't know how to manage 'em; I don't want to
flatter that ere conceited feller--but Ben Benson does know how to cook
a trout arter he's catched it."

"Do as you please, Benson; they will certainly taste better from your
hand than if prepared by a cook whom I have never seen."

"In course they will," answered Ben, taking up his basket. "I'll go down
to the kitchen, and get things under way."

CHAPTER XXII.

A RENEWAL OF CONFIDENCE.

Mabel saw him depart almost unconsciously. The morning had been one of
surprises and painfully conflicting feelings. She felt that a crisis in
her life had arrived, that the time for dreamy thoughts and gentle
endurance was at an end, and her strength rose to meet the occasion. The
lassitude and nervous reluctance to give up her seclusion which had
oppressed her of late, gave way, and with that dignity which is born of
womanly self-command, she changed her toilet, and passed from the
solitude of her sick room.

The sitting-room which we described in a chapter of this narration was
empty when Mrs. Harrington entered it. The luxurious easy-chairs stood
about the floor, as if recently occupied, and the fire of hickory-wood
burned brightly behind a fender of steel lace-work that broke the light
in a thousand gleams and scattered it far out on the moss-like rug.
Everything was as she had left it, even to the position of her own
easy-chair in a corner of the bay window, but the absence of all living
objects chilled her, and a presentiment of perpetual loneliness crept