amiss
with Lady Jaquetta Trevor's spirits, but that they were too high at
times.

"Of course I don't mean that I was miserable!" she said; "but there's
something now that does make everything so delicious."

"Could you not take that something to the park?" I asked, laughing.

"I don't know! It would not be so bad if I could run in and out at the
parsonage as I do now."

And as I smiled, it smote me as I recollected that Arthur Cradock was
always at the parsonage in the vacations. Jaquetta had been sketched
many a time as nymph of the orchard, and many a nymph besides. And if
he was yielding to his brother's wisdom in making medicine his study
and art his pleasure, was not our unconscious maiden the sugar that
sweetened the cup of prudence? Might not elevation be as sore a trial
to her as depression had been to us?

However, our troubling ourselves was all nonsense. Good Joel Lea would
never have connived at any evil doings. All he had wanted of Fulk was
to be certain of his forgiveness for the injury he had suffered through
his wife, and to entreat him to keep a watch over her and the boy.

"You are her brother, when all is come and gone," he said; "and I do
not trust that Perrault. If ever he fails her, or turns against her,
you'll stand her friend, and look to the boy?"

Fulk heartily promised, and Joel further begged him to write to her
eldest brother, Francis Dayman (who was prospering immensely in the
timber trade), and let him know the state of things--though he had been
so angered at Hester's sacrifice of his mother's good name and his own
birth, that he had broken with her entirely.

"But if anyone can get her out of Perrault's hands, it is Francis,"
poor Joel said; and he went on to talk of his poor boy, about whom he
was very anxious, having no trust in any of Hester's intimates, and
begging Fulk to throw a good word to him now and then.

"He thinks much of you," he said. "I heard him tell Miss Deerhurst
that it was no use for anyone to try to be such an out-and-out
gentleman as his uncle, for they couldn't do it, and he had rather be
like you than anyone else. I don't care for gentlemen, and all that
foolery, as you know. I wish I could leave him to my old mate, Eli
Potter; but you are true and honest, Fulk Torwood, and I think not so
far from the kingdom--"

Then he asked Fulk to read a chapter to him. No one else would do so,
except little Trevor, when now and then left alone with hi