ip wishes to see you in the
drawing-room."

My cousin's face fell several inches.

"Some mistake, Gertrude," she exclaimed. "It's me isn't it, that mamma
wants?"

"Her ladyship bid me tell Miss Kate she wished to see her
_immediately_," was my maid's reply; so I tripped downstairs with a
beating heart, and crossed the hall just in time to see Squire Haycock
riding leisurely away from the house (though it was bitter cold and a
hard frost, the first of the season), and looking up at the window,
doubtless in hopes of an encouraging wave from the white handkerchief
of his _fiancee_ presumptive.

Short as was the interval between my own door and that of the
drawing-room I had time to run over in my mind the whole advantages
and disadvantages of the flattering proposal which I was now convinced
had been made on my behalf. If I became Mrs. Haycock (and I saw
clearly that I had not mistaken the Squire's meaning on our return
from hunting), I should be at the head of a handsome establishment,
should have a good-tempered, easy-going, pleasant husband, who would
let me do just what I liked and hunt to my heart's content; should
live in the country, and look after the poor, and feed hens and
chickens, and sink down comfortably into a contented old age. I need
not separate from Aunt Deborah, who would never be able to do without
me; and I might, I am sure, turn the Squire with the greatest ease
round my little finger. But then there certainly were great
objections. I could have got over the colour of his hair, though a red
head opposite me every morning would undoubtedly be a trial; but the
freckles! No, I do not think I could do my duty as a wife by a man so
dreadfully freckled. I'm certain I couldn't love him; and if I didn't
love him I oughtn't to marry him, and I thought of the sad, sad tale
of Lucy, Lady Horsingham, whose ghost was now in the nightly habit of
haunting Dangerfield Hall. The struggles that poor thing must have
gone through, the leaden hours of dull, torpid misery, the agonizing
moments of acute remorse, the perpetual spirit-wearing conflict
between duty and inclination, much to the discomfiture of the former;
and the haunting face of Cousin Edward continually rising on that
heated imagination, pleading, reproaching, suing till she loved him,
if possibly more madly in his absence than when he was by her side. I
too was beginning to have a "Cousin Edward" of my own; Frank Lovell's
image was far too often pres