st have had a dreadful unhappiness.

Mama kept her promise by sending my riding habit and hat punctually, but
I had run far ahead of all the wishes I had formed when I left home, and
I half feared my ride out with Mr. Pollingray. That was before I had
received Charles's letter, letting me know the object of my invitation
here. I require at times a morbid pride to keep me up to the work. I
suppose I rode befittingly, for Mr. Pollingray praised my seat on
horseback. I know I can ride, or feel the 'blast of a horse like my
own'--as he calls it. Yet he never could have had a duller companion. My
conversation was all yes and no, as if it went on a pair of crutches like
a miserable cripple. I was humiliated and vexed. All the while I was
trying to lead up to the French lady, and I could not commence with a
single question. He appears to, have really cancelled the past in every
respect save his calling me his goddaughter. His talk was of the English
poor, and vegetation, and papa's goodness to his old dames in Ickleworth
parish, and defects in my education acknowledged by me, but not likely to
restore me in my depressed state. The ride was beautiful. We went the
length of a twelve-mile ridge between Ickleworth and Hillford, over high
commons, with immense views on both sides, and through beech-woods,
oakwoods, and furzy dells and downs spotted with juniper and
yewtrees--old picnic haunts of mine, but Mr. Pollingray's fresh delight
in the landscape made them seem new and strange. Home through the valley.

The next day Miss Pollingray joined us, wearing a feutre gris and green
plume, which looked exceedingly odd until you became accustomed to it.
Her hair has decided gray streaks, and that, and the Queen Elizabeth
nose, and the feutre gris!--but she is so kind, I could not even smile in
my heart. It is singular that Mr. Pollingray, who's but three years her
junior, should look at least twenty years younger--at the very least. His
moustache and beard are of the colour of a corn sheaf, and his blue eyes
shining over them remind me of summer. That describes him. He is summer,
and has not fallen into his autumn yet. Miss Pollingray helped me to talk
a little. She tried to check her brother's enthusiasm for our scenery,
and extolled the French paysage. He laughed at her, for when they were in
France it was she who used to say, 'There is nothing here like England!'
Miss Fool rode between them attentive to the jingling of the bells in h