y prosperity and beautiful, beautiful things.
So, as this experience is new, I am dutifully obliged for the excitement
it gives me, and am glad to be here, awesome as the place is, and
destitute of any such pleasures as I have been accustomed to in the gay
cities where I have hitherto spent most of my time.

But there! I am rambling again. I have come to X., as you now see, for
good and sufficient reasons, and while this house is one of consequence
and has been the resort of many notable people, it is a little lonesome,
our only neighbor being a young man who has a fine enough appearance,
but who has already shown his admiration of me so plainly--of course he
was in the road when I drove up to the house--that I lost all interest
in him at once, such a nonsensical liking at first sight being, as I
take it, a tribute only to my audacious little travelling bonnet and the
curl or two which will fall out on my cheek when I move my head about
too quickly, as I certainly could not be blamed for doing, in driving
into a place where I was expected to make myself happy for two weeks.

He, then, is out of these chronicles. When I say his name is Obadiah
Trohm, you will probably be duly thankful. But he is not as stiff and
biblical as his name would lead you to expect. On the contrary, he is
lithe, graceful, and suave to a point which makes Charles Knollys'
judicial face a positive relief to the eye and such little understanding
as has been accorded me.

I cannot write another word. It is twelve o'clock, and though I have the
cosiest room in the house, all chintz and decorated china, I find myself
listening and peering just as I did down-stairs in their great barn of a
drawing-room. I wonder if any very dreadful things ever happened in this
house? I will ask old Mr. Knollys to-morrow, or--or Mr. Charles.

* * * * *

I am sorry I was so inquisitive; for the stories Charles told me--I
thought I had better not trouble the old gentleman--have only served to
people the shadows of this rambling old house with figures of whose
acquaintance I am likely to be more or less shy. One tale in particular
gave me the shivers. It was about a mother and daughter who both loved
the same man (it seems incredible, girls so seldom seeing with the eyes
of their mothers), and it was the daughter who married him, while the
mother, broken-hearted, fled from the wedding and was driven up to the
great door, here, in a coach