bright, generous heiress. Caroline would not consent to
mingle with the gay crowd which kept up a brilliant carnival all day
long in the park, in the vast drawing-room, everywhere, except in that
one old tower where the countess spent her quiet life. At the grand
festival she had resolved to come forth and do the honors of her own
castle, but until then she contented herself by receiving her guests,
and then pleasantly turning them over to the splendid woman who filled
her place with such consummate ability.

This arrangement threw Caroline almost constantly into the seclusion of
the tower apartments, and it so chanced that she had not once met Lady
Hope, who was, in fact, unconscious of her presence in the castle.

Clara remembered, with some trepidation, the rebuke which had been given
her, regarding her liking for this girl, and, not caring to provoke a
repetition, did not mention the fact of her residence at Houghton. Thus
it chanced that neither Lord Hope or his wife knew of the independent
step their daughter had taken.

Lady Clara had evidently something on her mind one day, for she gave up
a ride to the hunt, a thing she had set her heart upon, and came after
Caroline to take a long walk in the park with her. Caroline went gladly,
for her heart was aching under its broken hopes, and as the excitement
connected with her new home died out, a sense of bereavement and
desolation came back. She was, indeed, very wretched, and Lady Clara saw
it. Perhaps this was the reason she took her protege out for that
pleasant walk in the park.

When the two girls reached that hollow through which the brook ran, and
where the ferns grew, Clara became suddenly conscious that Caroline must
be tired.

Perhaps she was. Caroline, in her listlessness, did not care to ask
herself about it, but sat down on a fragment of rock, as Clara directed
her, and fell to watching the brook with her sad eyes, as it crept
through the ferns and gurgled over the pebbles at her feet.

Meantime Clara had wandered quietly up the hollow, and disappeared in
search of something which grew a little way off, she said. So Caroline
was not to move till she came back, unless she wished to be lost
utterly.

Caroline liked the solitude, and the cool ripple of the brook soothed
her. She was rather sorry when a footstep on the forest turf heralded
the return of her friend; but she looked up with a welcoming smile, and
saw Lord Hilton, her Italian teacher--the