d be mournful to see her broken down. Let me think. She is quite
as old, if not older, than my grandfather, is she not?"

"There is not a year between them, I have heard my father say," answered
Judson, with a prim consciousness of the delicate subject they had
trenched upon; "not that I know of myself."

"Certainly not. But my grandfather--it is some weeks since I heard of
him."

"The earl is quite well, my lord. He was at the castle only last week,
and spent a long morning with my lady."

"Indeed!" muttered the young man. "That probably accounts for my summons
home."

"She had been uncommonly anxious for a long time, and at last sent for
him to come and see her."

"Very natural. They are old friends."

"Then, my lord, she sent me on this journey--not that I came alone. The
steward is on the train. My lady would not permit her grand-daughter to
travel with but one attendant."

"Her grand-daughter?"

"I beg pardon, my lord, but this young lady is Lord Hope's daughter."

Hilton lifted his hat and met Lady Clara's look of smiling surprise with
a courteous bend of the head, but her quick eye caught the sudden glow
that swept his face, and wondered at it. She wondered still more when a
grave expression followed the blush; and, instead of making himself
agreeable, he opened the novel that lay on the seat, and seemed to be
occupied by its pages, though she remarked, with an inward chuckle, that
he never turned a page.

After a while the young man laid down his book, wearily, and Clara saw
his chest heave slowly as he breathed a long, deep, but unconscious
sigh.

"He is in trouble, like me," was her quick thought. "Perhaps his
grandfather is a hard, cruel old man, and drives everything he loves out
of doors, without caring how he may feel about it, or perhaps--"

Clara might have gone on conjecturing all sorts of possibilities; but
that moment the train stopped at a small town, and close by the station
she saw an old woman, with a pile of crimson-cheeked peaches and some
pears on a table beside her. An exclamation broke from her, and she
leaned eagerly forward just as the carriage-door was unlocked.

"Oh, how splendid! such peaches! such pears!" she exclaimed, feeling in
the pocket of her sacque for some loose money, which she usually carried
there. "Oh! Margaret--"

Here she turned to the woman next her, and blushed with vexation when
she remembered that Margaret was no longer there to take her commands.