wayward, impulsive creature, quick to take offence, to
misunderstand, and--to repent."

Back into the broad, broad gravel-walk, walked, more slowly than before,
Lady Montfort. Again the sixty ghastly windows stared at her with all
their eyes; back from the gravelwalk, through a side-door into the
pompous solitude of the stately house; across long chambers, where the
mirrors reflected her form, and the huge chairs, in their flaunting
damask and flaring gold, stood stiff on desolate floors; into her own
private room,--neither large nor splendid that; plain chintzes, quiet
book shelves. She need not have been the Marchioness of Montfort to
inhabit a room as pleasant and as luxurious. And the rooms that she
could only have owned as marchioness, what were those worth to her
happiness? I know not. "Nothing," fine ladies will perhaps answer.
Yet those same fine ladies will contrive to dispose their daughters to
answer, "All." In her own room Lady Montfort sank on her chair; wearily,
wearily she looked at the clock; wearily at the books on the shelves, at
the harp near the window. Then she leaned her face on her hand, and that
face was so sad, and so humbly sad, that you would have wondered how any
one could call Lady Montfort proud.

"Treasure! I! I! worthless, fickle, credulous fool! I! I!"

The groom of the chambers entered with the letters by the afternoon
post. That great house contrived to worry itself with two posts a day. A
royal command to Windsor--

"I shall be more alone in a court than here," murmured Lady Montfort.

CHAPTER II.

Truly saith the proverb, "Much corn lies under the straw that is not
seen."

Meanwhile George Morley followed the long shady walk,--very handsome
walk, full of prize roses and rare exotics, artificially winding
too,--walk so well kept that it took thirty-four men to keep it,--noble
walk, tiresome walk, till it brought him to the great piece of water,
which, perhaps, four times in the year was visited by the great folks
in the Great House. And being thus out of the immediate patronage of
fashion, the great piece of water really looked natural, companionable,
refreshing: you began to breathe; to unbutton your waistcoat, loosen
your neckcloth, quote Chaucer, if you could recollect him, or Cowper, or
Shakspeare, or Thomson's "Seasons;" in short, any scraps of verse that
came into your head,--as your feet grew joyously entangled with fern; as
the trees grouped forest-like be