hardly spoke to each other, as they
drove through the sweet valleys, where the sunshine laid a gold on the
green, and the warm south-wind gently rocked the daisies, and the
lark's song was like a silvery water-fall up in the sky.

But they were young; and, oh, the rich significance of the word
"young" when the heart is young as well as the body, when the thoughts
are not doubts, and when the eyes look not backward, but only forward,
into a bright future!

CHAPTER VI.

"LOVE SHALL BE LORD OF SANDY-SIDE."

During thirty years of the first half of this century Mrs. St. Alban's
finishing school for young gentlewomen was a famous institution of its
kind. For she had been born to the manner of courts and of people of
high degree; and when evil fortune met her, she very wisely turned her
inherited social advantages into a means of honest livelihood.
Aspatria was much impressed by her noble bearing and fine manners, and
by the elaborate state in which the twelve pupils, of whom she was
one, lived.

Each had her own suite of apartments; each was expected to keep a
maid, and to dress with the utmost care and propriety. There were
fine horses in the stables for their equestrian exercise, there
were grooms to attend them during it, and there were regular
reception-days, which afforded tyros in social accomplishments
practical opportunities for cultivating the graceful and gracious
urbanity which evidences really fine breeding.

Many of Aspatria's companions were of high rank,--Lady Julias and Lady
Augustas, who were destined to wear ducal coronets and to stand around
the throne of their young queen. But they were always charmingly
pleasant and polite, and Aspatria soon acquired their outward form of
calm deliberation and their mode of low, soft speech. For the rest,
she decided, with singular prudence, to cultivate only those talents
which nature had obviously granted her.

A few efforts proved that she had no taste for art. Indeed, the
attempt to portray the majesty of the mountains or the immensity of
the ocean seemed to her childishly petty and futile. She had dwelt
among the high places and been familiar with the great sea, and to
make images of them appeared a kind of sacrilege. But she liked the
study of languages, and she had a rich contralto voice capable of
expressing all the emotions of the heart. At the piano she hesitated;
its music, under her unskilled fingers, sounded mechanical; she
doubted her abil