r! It was too
irritating; he could not endure it. He was very cold and distant to
Pauline for some time, but the young girl was serenely unconscious of
it.

In one respect she was changing rapidly. The time had been when she had
been indifferent to Darrell Court, when she had thought with regret of
the free, happy life in the Rue d'Orme, where she could speak lightly of
the antiquity and grandeurs of the race from which she had sprung; but
all that was altered now. It could not be otherwise, considering how
romantic, how poetical, how impressionable she was, how keenly alive to
everything beautiful and noble. She was living here in the very cradle
of the race, where every tree had its legend, every stone its story; how
could she be indifferent while the annals of her house were filled with
noble retrospects? The Darrells had numbered great warriors and
statesmen among their number. Some of the noblest women in England had
been Darrells; and Pauline had learned to glory in the old stories, and
to feel her heart beat with pride as she remembered that she, too, was a
Darrell.

So, likewise, she had grown to love the Court for its picturesque
beauty, its stately magnificence, and the time came soon when almost
every tree and shrub was dear to her.

It was Pauline's nature to love deeply and passionately if she loved at
all; there was no lukewarmness about her. She was incapable of those
gentle, womanly likings that save all wear and tear of passion. She
could not love in moderation; and very soon the love of Darrell Court
became a passion with her. She sketched the mansion from twenty
different points of view, she wrote verses about it; she lavished upon
it the love which some girls lavish upon parents, brothers, sisters, and
friends.

She stood one day looking at it as the western sunbeams lighted it up
until it looked as though it were bathed in gold. The stately towers and
turrets, the flower-wreathed balconies, the grand arched windows, the
Gothic porch, all made up a magnificent picture; the fountains were
playing in the sunlit air, the birds singing in the stately trees. She
turned to Miss Hastings, and the governess saw tears standing warm and
bright in the girl's eyes.

"How beautiful it is!" she said. "I cannot tell you--I have no words to
tell you--how I love my home."

The heart of the gentle lady contracted with sudden fear.

"It is very beautiful," she said; "but, Pauline, do not love it too
much; rem