your mother I had nothing,
and she gave up everything for me. I said I would yet make her as high
as any lady in the land,--in fortune I then meant, thinking it would
make her happier; but she and I are wiser now. We know that we never
can be happier than we were in the old house at Norton Bury, or in this
little Longfield. By making her lady of Beechwood I should double her
responsibilities and treble her cares; give her an infinitude of new
duties, and no pleasures half so sweet as those we leave behind.
Still, of herself and for herself, my wife shall decide."

Ursula looked up at him; tears stood in her eyes, though through them
shone all the steadfastness of faithful love. "Thank you, John. I
have decided. If you wish it, if you think it right, we will leave
Longfield and go to Beechwood."

He stooped and kissed her forehead, saying only: "We will go."

Guy looked up, half-reproachfully, as if the father were exacting a
sacrifice; but I question whether the greater sacrifice were not his
who took rather than hers who gave.

So all was settled--we were to leave beloved Longfield. It was to be
let, not sold; let to a person we knew, who would take jealous care of
all that was ours, and we might come back and see it continually; but
it would be ours--our own home--no more.

Very sad--sadder even than I had thought--was the leaving all the
familiar things; the orchard and the flower-garden, the meadow and the
stream, the woody hills beyond, every line and wave of which was
pleasant and dear almost as our children's faces. Ay, almost as that
face which for a year--one little year, had lived in sight of, but
never beheld, their beauty; the child who one spring day had gone away
merrily out of the white gate with her three brothers, and never came
back to Longfield any more.

Perhaps this circumstance, that her fading away and her departure
happened away from home, was the cause why her memory--the memory of
our living Muriel, in her human childhood--afterwards clung more
especially about the house at Longfield. The other children altered,
imperceptibly, yet so swiftly, that from year to year we half forgot
their old likenesses. But Muriel's never changed. Her image, only a
shade, yet often more real than any of these living children, seemed
perpetually among us. It crept through the house at dusk; in winter
fire-light it sat smiling in dim corners; in spring mornings it moved
about the garden borders,