who thought nothing too much for
their son; and she gladly came to attend the christening of the
young Raymond. Gladly--yes, she was glad to leave Dunstone. She
had gone home weary and sick of her lodging and convalescence, and
hoping to find relief in the home that had once been all-sufficient
for her, but Dunstone was not changed, and she was. She had not
been able to help outgrowing its narrow opinions and formal
precisions; and when she came home, crushed with her scarcely
realized grief, nothing there had power to comfort her.

There was soothing at first in her step-mother's kindness, and she
really loved her father; but their petting admiration soon grew
oppressive, after the more bracing air of Compton; and their
idolatry of her little brother fretted and tried her all the more,
because they thought he must be a comfort to her, and any slight
from her might be misconstrued. Mr. Venn's obsequiousness, instead
of rightful homage, seemed deprivation of support, and she saw no
one, spoke to no one, without the sense of Raymond's vast
superiority and her own insensibility to it, loving him a thousand
times more than she had loved him in life, and mourning him with an
anguish beyond what the most perfect union would have left. She had
nothing to do. Self-improvement was a mere oppression, and she
longed after nothing so much as the sight of Rosamond, Anne, Julius,
or even Frank, and her amiable wishes prevailed to have them invited
to Dunstone; but at the times specified there were hindrances. Anne
had engagements at home, and Rosamond appeared to the rest of the
family to be a perpetual refuge for stray De Lanceys, while Frank
had to make up for his long enforced absence by a long unbroken
spell of work.

Cecil therefore had seen none of the family till she arrived at
Compton. She was perfectly well, she said, and had become a great
walker, and so, indeed, she showed herself, for she went out
directly after breakfast every morning, and never appeared again
till luncheon time; and would take long rides in the afternoon. "It
was her only chance of sleep," she said, when remonstrated with.
She did not look ill, but there was a restless, worn air that was
very distressing on her young features, and was the more piteous to
her relations, that she was just as constrained as ever in her
intercourse with them. She was eagerly attentive to Mrs. Poynsett,
and evidently so anxious to wait on her that Anne left to