gremont mournfully.

"It is not that," said Sybil: "I was prepared for decay, but not for
such absolute desecration. The Abbey seems a quarry for materials to
repair farm-houses; and the nave a cattle gate. What people they must
be--that family of sacrilege who hold these lands!"

"Hem!" said Egremont. "They certainly do not appear to have much feeling
for ecclesiastical art."

"And for little else, as we were told," said Sybil. "There was a fire at
the Abbey farm the day we were there, and from all that reached us, it
would appear the people were as little tendered as the Abbey walls."

"They have some difficulty perhaps in employing their population in
those parts."

"You know the country?"

"Not at all: I was travelling in the neighbourhood, and made a diversion
for the sake of seeing an abbey of which I had heard so much."

"Yes; it was the greatest of the Northern Houses. But they told me the
people were most wretched round the Abbey; nor do I think there is any
other cause for their misery, than the hard hearts of the family that
have got the lands."

"You feel deeply for the people!" said Egremont looking at her
earnestly.

Sybil returned him a glance expressive of some astonishment, and then
said, "And do not you? Your presence here assures me of it."

"I humbly follow one who would comfort the unhappy."

"The charity of Mr St Lys is known to all."

"And you--you too are a ministering angel."

"There is no merit in my conduct, for there is no sacrifice. When I
remember what this English people once was; the truest, the freest, and
the bravest, the best-natured and the best-looking, the happiest and
most religious race upon the surface of this globe; and think of them
now, with all their crimes and all their slavish sufferings, their
soured spirits and their stunted forms; their lives without enjoyment
and their deaths without hope; I may well feel for them, even if I were
not the daughter of their blood."

And that blood mantled to her cheek as she ceased to speak, and her dark
eye gleamed with emotion, and an expression of pride and courage hovered
on her brow. Egremont caught her glance and withdrew his own; his heart
was troubled.

St Lys. who had been in conference with the weaver, left him and went
to the bedside of his wife. Warner advanced to Sybil, and expressed his
feelings for her father, his sense of her goodness. She, observing that
the squall seemed to have ceased, bade him farewe