wistful admiration. This
was Philip's home! and she was here to make it bright and glad for
him!--she could imagine no fairer fate. The old servants of the place
welcomed their new mistress with marked respect and evident astonishment
at her beauty, though, when they knew her better, they marvelled still
more at her exceeding gentleness and courtesy. The housekeeper, a
stately white-haired dame, who had served the former Lady Errington,
declared she was "an angel"--while the butler swore profoundly that "he
knew what a queen was like at last!"

The whole household was pervaded with an affectionate eagerness to
please her, though, perhaps, the one most dazzled by her entrancing
smile and sweet consideration for his comfort was Edward Neville, Sir
Philip's private secretary and librarian,--a meek, mild-featured man of
some five and forty years old, whose stooping shoulders, grizzled hair,
and weak eyes gave him an appearance of much greater age. Thelma was
particularly kind to Neville, having heard his history from her husband.
It was brief and sad. He had married a pretty young girl whom he had
found earning a bare subsistence as a singer in provincial
music-halls,--loving her, he had pitied her unprotected state, and had
rescued her from the life she led--but after six months of comparative
happiness, she had suddenly deserted him, leaving no clue as to where or
why she had gone. His grief for her loss, weighed heavily upon his
mind--he brooded incessantly upon it--and though his profession was that
of a music master and organist, he grew so abstracted and inattentive to
the claims of the few pupils he had, that they fell away from him one by
one--and, after a bit, he lost his post as organist to the village
church as well. This smote him deeply, for he was passionately fond of
music, and was, moreover, a fine player,--and it was at this stage of
his misfortunes that he met by chance Bruce-Errington. Philip, just
then, was almost broken-hearted--his father and mother had died suddenly
within a week of one another,--and he, finding the blank desolation of
his home unbearable, was anxious to travel abroad for a time, so soon as
he could find some responsible person in whose hands to leave the charge
of the Manor, with its invaluable books and pictures, during his
absence.

Hearing Neville's history through a mutual friend, he decided, with his
usual characteristic impulse, that here was the very man for him--a
gentlema