e happy. There was very much
in the life which she thoroughly enjoyed. The green fields, and the
air which was so pleasant to her after the close heat of the narrow
London streets, and the bright parsonage garden, and the pleasant
services of the country church,--and doubtless also the luxuries of
a rich, well-ordered household. Those calculations of her mother had
not been made without a true basis. The softness, the niceness, the
ease, the grace of the people around her, won upon her day by day,
and hour by hour. The pleasant idleness of the drawing-room, with its
books and music, and unstrained chatter of family voices, grew upon
her as so many new charms. To come down with bright ribbons and clean
unruffled muslin to breakfast, with nothing to do which need ruffle
them unbecomingly, and then to dress for dinner with silk and gauds,
before ten days were over, had made life beautiful to her. She seemed
to live among roses and perfumes. There was no stern hardness in the
life, as there had of necessity been in that which she had ever lived
with her mother. The caresses of Minnie Lovel soothed and warmed her
heart;--and every now and again, when the eyes of Aunt Julia were not
upon her, she was tempted to romp with the boys. Oh! that they had
really been her brothers!

But in the midst of all there was ever present to her the prospect of
some coming wretchedness. The life which she was leading could not
be her life. That Earl was coming,--that young Apollo,--and he would
again ask her to be his wife. She knew that she could not be his
wife. She was there, as she understood well, that she might give all
this wealth that was to be hers to the Lovel family; and when she
refused to give herself,--as the only way in which that wealth could
be conveyed,--they would turn her out from their pleasant home.
Then she must go back to the other life, and be the wife of Daniel
Thwaite; and soft things must be at an end with her.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE EARL ARRIVES.

At the end of a fortnight the boys had gone back to school, and Lord
Lovel was to reach the rectory in time for dinner that evening. There
was a little stir throughout the rectory, as an earl is an earl
though he be in his uncle's house, and rank will sway even aunts
and cousins. The parson at present was a much richer man than the
peer;--but the peer was at the head of all the Lovels, and then it
was expected that his poverty would quickly be made to disappear.