partly, though
of this she was unaware, pleasurable. Until now she had been dwelling in
the past--the near past--the past which was all loss and sadness,--but
as one familiar scene after another unfolded itself, involuntarily they
awakened interest and a faint anticipation. Of a nature to be happy
anywhere, and to cull blossoms off the most arid soil, the necessity for
living in a villa among other villas on the outskirts of a great
manufacturing town, had never called for lament and depreciation: no one
had ever heard Boldero Abbey descanted upon,--indeed Leonore had sharply
criticised the taste of a new arrival on the scene, a girl transplanted
like herself by marriage, who was for ever telling her new associates
what was done in B--shire.

All this young lady's endeavours could not win an adherent in Mrs.
Stubbs, who simply put on a wooden face, and said, "Indeed?" when the
other threw out: "It's all so different here from what I am accustomed
to. I have never lived in any place like this before."

Leo moreover had her triumph which she kept for Godfrey's ear. "You know
how that girl brags, and what an amount of side she puts on? Would you
believe it, Godfrey, she's only a sort of stable-keeper's daughter!
Well, I don't know what else you call it; her father is a trainer of
race-horses, and that's how she knows about them; and the big people she
quotes, of course they are all about such places--and--oh, I think it's
sickening, even if it were no sham--that running down of nice James
Bilson, who never sets up to be anything, and is a hundred thousand
times too good for his wife."

"_You_ don't buck, anyway," said he.

"I'd be ashamed," said Leonore proudly.

Her father and sisters thought the villa with its luxurious, well-kept
surroundings, met her every aspiration; they liked it very well
themselves as a _pied-a-terre_,--and though of course the grounds might
have been more extensive, and the smoke of tall chimneys farther off,
the general was remarkably sensible on the point. "Land is valuable
hereabouts, and a man must live where he can keep an eye on his
business."

"And our horses can go almost any distance;" Leonore was always anxious
to impress this point. "We have lovely drives round by the Dee; you
would almost think you were in the real country there."

"Quite so, my dear," her father would respond urbanely.

In his heart he spurned the idea. Country? Up went his chin, God bless
his soul, the whol