tim.

The analysis of such a nature as hers, with her story to set it forth,
would require a book to itself, and I must happily content myself with
but a fact here and there in her history.

In one of her rambles on his ground she had her desire, and met Godfrey
Wardour. He lifted his hat, and she stopped and addressed him by way of
apology.

"I am afraid you think me very rude, Mr. Wardour," she said. "I know I
am trespassing, but this field of yours is higher than the ground about
Durnmelling, and seems to take pounds off the weight of the atmosphere."

For all he had gone through, Godfrey was not yet less than courteous to
ladies. He assured Miss Yolland that Thornwick was as much at her
service as if it were a part of Durnmelling. "Though, indeed," he
added, with a smile, "it would be more correct to say, 'as if
Durnmelling were a part of Thornwick'--for that was the real state of
the case once upon a time."

The statement interested or seemed to interest Miss Yolland, giving
rise to many questions; and a long conversation ensued. Suddenly she
woke, or seemed to wake, to the consciousness that she had forgotten
herself and the proprieties together: hastily, and to all appearance
with some confusion, she wished him a good morning; but she was not too
much confused to thank him again for the permission he had given her to
walk on his ground.

It was not by any intention on the part of Godfrey that they met
several times after this; but they always had a little conversation
before they parted; nor did Sepia find any difficulty in getting him
sufficiently within their range to make him feel the power of her eyes.
She was too prudent, however, to bring to bear upon any man all at once
the full play of her mesmeric battery; and things had got no further
when she went to London--a week or two before the return of the
Redmains, ostensibly to get things in some special readiness for
Hesper; but that this may have been a pretense appears possible from
the fact that Mary came from Cornwall on the same mission a few days
later.

I have just mentioned an acquaintance of Sepia's, who attracted the
notice and roused the peculiar interest of Mr. Redmain, because of a
look he saw pass betwixt them. This man spoke both English and French
with a foreign accent, and gave himself out as a Georgian--Count
Galofta, he called himself: I believe he was a prince in Paris. At this
time he was in London, and, during the ten days that