first time
to array herself in the insignia of her new rank. Knowing that the
bridle-path lay through parks, woodlands and heaths, so that there was
no fear of dust, she put on a dainty habit of white cloth, trimmed and
faced with blue velvet, and a low-crowned hat with a white feather. On
her pretty grey horse, the young Madam Belamour was a fair and gracious
sight, as she rode into the yard of the Red Lion at Brentford. Harriet
was at the window watching for her, and Mr. Arden received her as she
sprang off her steed, then led her up to the parlour, where breakfast
was spread awaiting her.

"Aurelia, what a sweet figure you make," cried Harriet, as the sisters
unwound their arms after the first ecstasy of embracing one another
again. "Where did you get that exquisite habit?"

"It came down from London with another, a dark blue," said Aurelia. "I
suppose Mr. Belamour ordered them, for they came with my horse. It is
the first time I have worn it."

"Ah! fine things are of little account when there is no one to see
them," said Mrs. Arden, shaking her head in commiseration.

She was attired in a grey riding-dress with a little silver lace about
it, and looked wonderfully plump and well, full of importance and
complacency, and with such a return of comeliness that Aurelia would
hardly have recognised the lean, haggard, fretful Harriet of the
previous year. Her sentiment and romance, her soft melancholy and little
affectations had departed, and she was already the notable prosperous
wife of a beneficed clergyman, of whose abilities she was very
proud, though she patronised with good-humoured contempt his dreamy,
unpractical, unworldly ways.

The questions poured forth from Aurelia's heart-hunger about
brother, sister and home, were answered kindly and fully over the
breakfast-table; but as if Harriet had turned that page in her life, and
expected Aurelia to have done the same, every now and then exclaiming:
"La! you have not forgotten that! What a memory you have, child!"

She wanted much more to talk of the parsonage and glebe of Rundell
Canonicorum, and of how many servants and cows she should keep,
and showed herself almost annoyed when Aurelia brought her back to
Carminster by asking whether Eugene had finished his Comenius, and if
the speckled hen had hatched many chickens, whether Palmer had had his
rheumatic attack this spring, or if the Major's letter to Vienna had
produced any tidings of Nannerl's relation.