ion, to acquire some new ideas from the objects
here for domestic application. Yet for the present he was inclined
to keep his sketch-book closed and his ivory rule folded, and devote
himself to a general survey. Emerging from the ground-floor by a small
doorway, he found himself on a terrace to the north-east, and on the
other side than that by which he had entered. It was bounded by a
parapet breast high, over which a view of the distant country met the
eye, stretching from the foot of the slope to a distance of many miles.
Somerset went and leaned over, and looked down upon the tops of the
bushes beneath. The prospect included the village he had passed through
on the previous day: and amidst the green lights and shades of the
meadows he could discern the red brick chapel whose recalcitrant inmate
had so engrossed him.

Before his attention had long strayed over the incident which
romanticized that utilitarian structure, he became aware that he was not
the only person who was looking from the terrace towards that point of
the compass. At the right-hand corner, in a niche of the curtain-wall,
reclined a girlish shape; and asleep on the bench over which she leaned
was a white cat--the identical Persian as it seemed--that had been taken
into the carriage at the chapel-door.

Somerset began to muse on the probability or otherwise of the
backsliding Baptist and this young lady resulting in one and the same
person; and almost without knowing it he found himself deeply hoping for
such a unity. The object of his inspection was idly leaning, and
this somewhat disguised her figure. It might have been tall or short,
curvilinear or angular. She carried a light sunshade which she fitfully
twirled until, thrusting it back over her shoulder, her head was
revealed sufficiently to show that she wore no hat or bonnet. This token
of her being an inmate of the castle, and not a visitor, rather damped
his expectations: but he persisted in believing her look towards the
chapel must have a meaning in it, till she suddenly stood erect, and
revealed herself as short in stature--almost dumpy--at the same time
giving him a distinct view of her profile. She was not at all like the
heroine of the chapel. He saw the dinted nose of the De Stancys outlined
with Holbein shadowlessness against the blue-green of the distant wood.
It was not the De Stancy face with all its original specialities: it
was, so to speak, a defective reprint of that face: fo