r own gates,
and then I returned to the house. And as I went in again, my
companion-shadow glided once more to my side with soft, insinuating,
irresistible importunity, and I knew that it would be my faithful
attendant for--who could say how long?

CHAPTER II.

"Traversons gravement cette mechante mascarade qu'on appelle le monde"

The houses in Skernford--the houses of "the gentry," that is to say--lay
almost all on one side an old-fashioned, sleepy-looking "green" toward
which their entrances lay; but their real front, their pleasantest
aspect, was on their other side, facing the river which ran below, and
down to which their gardens sloped in terraces. Our house, the vicarage,
lay nearest the church; Miss Hallam's house, the Grange, furthest from
the church. Between these, larger and more imposing, in grounds beside
which ours seemed to dwindle down to a few flower-beds, lay Deeplish
Hall, whose owner, Sir Peter Le Marchant, had lately come to live there,
at least for a time.

It was many years since Sir Peter Le Marchant, whose image at this time
was fated to enter so largely and so much against my will into all my
calculations, had lived at or even visited his estate at Skernford. He
was a man of immense property, and report said that Deeplish Hall, which
we innocent villagers looked upon as such an imposing mansion, was but
one and not the grandest of his several country houses. All that I knew
of his history--or rather, all that I had heard of it, whether truly or
not, I was in no position to say--was but a vague and misty account; yet
that little had given me a dislike to him before I ever met him.

Miss Hallam, our neighbor, who lived in such solitude and retirement,
was credited with having a history--if report had only been able to fix
upon what it was. She was popularly supposed to be of a grim and
decidedly eccentric disposition. Eccentric she was, as I afterward
found--as I thought when I first saw her. She seldom appeared either in
church or upon any other public occasion, and was said to be the deadly
enemy of Sir Peter Le Marchant and all pertaining to him. There was some
old, far-back romance connected with it--a romance which I did not
understand, for up to now I had never known either her or Sir Peter
sufficiently to take any interest in the story, but the report ran that
in days gone by--how far gone by, too, they must have been!--Miss
Hallam, a young and handsome heiress, loved very de