d:

"Did Mr. Arundel say anything to you as he drove into Wells?"

"Say!" exclaimed the squire. "Well, he is not dumb. He said his head
ached, for one thing."

"Ah!" said Mrs. Falconer; "he did not say any thing about his heart?"

The squire puffed a little smoke from his long clay pipe; for he
indulged in a pipe sometimes, though the amount of tobacco consumed in
the present day would have amazed him, and shocked him also, had he
known that the greatest smokers were the young men and boys, to whom,
sixty years ago, smoking was forbidden. He did not seem inclined to say
anything in reply to his wife's last question.

"Because," said Mrs. Falconer, with that far-seeing and oracular wisdom
in which men hope in vain to rival us in these matters, at least;
"because I believe Gilbert Arundel is in love with our Joyce."

"Well," said the squire, "that would be no wonder to me; but I daresay
it is only one of your fancies, Kate."

"We shall see; we shall see," said Mrs. Falconer. "I only hope he has
not trifled with my child, and that my 'fancies,' as you call them,
_are_ fancies, that is all."

CHAPTER VII.

ON SION HILL, CLIFTON.

Gilbert Arundel was to meet his mother in Clifton, where arrangements
were to be made for their permanent residence there. Clifton was at this
time gradually changing its position, or rather enlarging its borders!
At the close of the preceding century, or during the latter half of it,
Clifton Spa was the chief attraction. To these healing waters, as we
know by Mason's celebrated epitaph, a sorrowing husband brought his
fading wife. Dowry Square and Dowry Parade, with their little quaint
pillars and balconies were in great request for invalids and visitors,
from their near neighbourhood to the pump room.

Consumptive patients might be seen slowly walking under the row of trees
by the banks of the muddy Avon, and gazing across at the deep recesses
of the Leigh Woods with wistful eyes. To the weak and the ailing
Nightingale Valley was then, though so near, very far off for them, and
only the robust and vigorous could cross the river by Rownham Ferry,
and scale the wooded heights which at all times and in all seasons are
so fair to look upon.

But at the time of which I write the tide of visitors was setting in
_upwards_. The word "relaxing" was coming into fashion, and enterprising
builders had raised, halfway up the hill, Windsor Terrace and the
Paragon, that circular range of