ime may come in which he
will think better of Mr. Egerton.'

'O Mary, if I could hope that!'

'Hope for everything, dear, if you do your duty.'

She grew a little more cheerful after this, and met her father at
diner with quite a placid face, though it was still very pale. Mrs.
Darrell looked at her wonderingly, and with a half-contemptuous
expression, I thought, as if this passion of her step-daughter's
seemed to her a very poor thing, after all.

Before the week was out, we heard that Mr. Egerton had left
Yorkshire. We did not go to the Pensildon fete. Milly had a cold and
kept her room, much to the regret of the Miss Collingwoods, who
called every day to inquire about her. She made this cold--which was
really a very slight affair--an excuse for a week's solitude, and at
the end of that time reappeared among us with no trace of her secret
sorrow. It was only I, who was always with her, and knew her to the
core of her heart, who could have told how hard a blow that
disappointment had been, and how much it cost her to bear it so
quietly.

CHAPTER X.

CHANGES AT THORNLEIGH.

The autumn and the early winter passed monotonously enough. There
was a good deal of company at Thornleigh Manor at first, for Mrs.
Darrell hated solitude; but after a little time she grew tired of
the people her husband knew, and the dinners and garden parties
became less frequent. I had found out, very soon after her return,
that she was not happy--that this easy prosperous life was in some
manner a burden to her. It was only in her husband's presence that
she made any pretence of being pleased or interested in things. With
him she was always the same--always deferential, affectionate, and
attentive; while he, on his side, was the devoted slave of her every
whim and wish.

She was not unkind to Milly, but those two seemed instinctively to
avoid each other.

The winter brought trouble to Thornleigh Manor. It was well for
Milly that she had tried to do her duty to her father, and had
submitted herself patiently to his will. About a fortnight before
Christmas Mr. Darrell went to North Shields to make his annual
investigation of the wharves and warehouses, and to take a kind of
review of the year's business. He never returned alive. He was
seized with an apoplectic fit in the office, and carried to his
hotel speechless. His wife and Milly were summoned by a telegraphic
message, and started for Shields by the first train that could