the frail garment of bursting leaves and timid grass
growths, that as yet is all she can find wherein to hide her charms; but
half clothed as she is, she is still beautiful.

Everything seems full of eager triumph. Hills, trees, valleys, lawns,
and bursting streams, all are overflowing with a wild enjoyment. All the
dull, dingy drapery in which winter had shrouded them has now been cast
aside, and the resplendent furniture with which each spring delights to
deck her home stands revealed.

All these past dead months her house has lain desolate, enfolded in
death's cerements, but now uprising in her vigorous youth, she flings
aside the dull coverings, and lets the sweet, brilliant hues that lie
beneath, shine forth in all their beauty to meet the eye of day.

Earth and sky are in bridal array, and from the rich recesses of the
woods, and from each shrub and branch the soft glad paeans of the mating
birds sound like a wedding chant.

Monkton had come back from that sad journey to Nice some weeks ago. He
had had very little to tell on his return, and that of the saddest. It
had all been only too true about those iniquitous debts, and the old
people were in great distress. The two town houses should be let at
once, and the old place in Warwickshire--the home, as he called
it--well! there was no hope now that it would ever be redeemed from the
hands of the Manchester people who held it; and Sir George had been so
sure that this spring he would have been in a position to get back his
own, and have the old place once more in his possession. It was all very
sad.

"There is no hope now. He will have to let the place to Barton for the
next ten years," said Monkton to his wife when he got home. Barton was
the Manchester man. "He is still holding off about doing it, but he
knows it must be done, and at all events the reality won't be a bit
worse than the thinking about it. Poor old Governor! You wouldn't know
him, Barbara. He has gone to skin and bone, and such a frightened sort
of look in his eyes."

"Oh! poor, poor old man!" cried Barbara, who could forget everything in
the way of past unkindness where her sympathies were enlisted.

Toward the end of February the guests had begun to arrive at the Court.
Lady Baltimore had returned there during January with her little son,
but Baltimore had not put in an appearance for some weeks later. A good
many new people unknown to the Monktons had arrived there with others
whom they