e tea with us, I hope, Miss Marston," said Godfrey.

But Mary would not. What she had heard was working in her mind with a
powerful fermentation, and she longed to be alone. In the fields, as
she walked, she would come to an understanding with herself.

She knew almost nothing of the higher literature, and felt like a
dreamer who, in the midst of a well-known and ordinary landscape, comes
without warning upon the mighty cone of a mountain, or the breaking
waters of a boundless ocean.

"If one could but get hold of such things, what a glorious life it
would be!" she thought. She had looked into a world beyond the present,
and already in the present all things were new. The sun set as she had
never seen him set before; it was only in gray and gold, with scarce a
touch of purple and rose; the wind visited her cheek like a living
thing, and loved her; the skylarks had more than reason in their
jubilation. For the first time she heard the full chord of intellectual
and emotional delight. What a place her chamber would be, if she could
there read such things! How easy would it be then to bear the troubles
of the hour, the vulgar humor of Mr. Turnbull, and the tiresome
attentions of George! Would Mr. Wardour lend her the book? Had he other
books as good? Were there many books to make one's heart go as that one
did? She would save every penny to buy such books, if indeed such
treasures were within her reach! Under the enchantment of her first
literary joy, she walked home like one intoxicated with opium--a being
possessed for the time with the awful imagination of a grander soul,
and reveling in the presence of her loftier kin.

CHAPTER IV.

GODFREY WARDOUR.

The property of which Thornwick once formed a part was then large and
important; but it had, by not very slow degrees, generation following
generation of unthrift, dwindled and shrunk and shriveled, until at
last it threatened to disappear from the family altogether, like a
spark upon burnt paper. Then came one into possession who had some
element of salvation in him; Godfrey's father not only held the poor
remnant together, but, unable to add to it, improved it so greatly that
at length, in the midst of the large properties around, it resembled
the diamond that hearts a disk of inferior stones. Doubtless, could he
have used his wife's money, he would have spent it on land; but it was
under trustees for herself and her children, and indeed would not have
gon