ave, and even her nephew was fast verging upon more than middle
age.

CHAPTER III.

LOUIS LE DEBONNAIRE.

I walked by his garden and saw the wild brier,
The thorn and the thistle grow broader and higher.
ISC WATTS.

Ormersfield Park was extensive, ranging into fine broken ground, rocky
and overgrown with brushwood; but it bore the marks of retrenchment;
there was hardly a large timber tree on the estate, enclosures had been
begun and deserted, and the deer had been sold off to make room for
farmers' cattle, which grazed up to the very front door.

The house was of the stately era of Anne, with a heavy portico and
clumsy pediment on the garden side, all the windows of the suite of
rooms opening on a broad stone terrace, whence steps descended to the
lawn, neatly kept, but sombre, for want of openings in the surrounding
evergreens.

It was early March, and a lady wrapped in a shawl was seated on the
terrace, enjoying the mild gleam of spring, and the freshness of the
sun-warmed air, which awoke a smile of welcome as it breathed on her
faded cheek, and her eyes gazed on the scene, in fond recognition.

It had been the home of Mrs. Ponsonby's childhood; and the slopes of
turf and belts of dark ilex were fraught with many a recollection of
girlish musings, youthful visions, and later, intervals of tranquillity
and repose. After fourteen years spent in South America, how many
threads she had to take up again! She had been as a sister to her
cousin, Lord Ormersfield, and had shared more of his confidence than
any other person during their earlier years, but afterwards their
intercourse had necessarily been confined to brief and guarded letters.
She had found him unchanged in his kindness to herself, and she was the
more led to ponder on the grave, stern impassiveness of his manner to
others, and to try to understand the tone of mind that it indicated.

She recalled him as he had been in his first youth--reserved, sensible,
thoughtful, but with the fire of ambition burning strongly within, and
ever and anon flashing forth vividly, repressed at once as too
demonstrative, but filling her with enthusiastic admiration. She
remembered him calmly and manfully meeting the shock of the failure,
that would, he knew, fetter and encumber him through life--how
resolutely he had faced the difficulties, how unselfishly he had put
himself out of the question, how uprightly he had