ce and figure were matched
in mature beauty; she had dark hair, braided above the forehead on each
side, and large dark eyes which regarded you with a pure intelligence,
disconcerting if your word uttered less than sincerity.

When her mother died Annabel was sixteen. Three months after that event
Mr. Newthorpe left London for his country house, which neither he nor
his daughter had since quitted. He had views of his own on the subject
of London life as it affects young ladies. By nature a student, he had
wedded a woman who became something not far removed from a fashionable
beauty. It was a passionate attachment on both sides at first, and to
the end he loved his wife with the love which can deny nothing. The
consequence was that the years of his prime were wasted, and the
intellectual promise of his youth found no fulfilment. Another year and
Annabel would have entered the social mill; she had beauty enough to
achieve distinction, and the means of the family were ample to enshrine
her. But she never 'came out.' No one would at first believe that Mr.
Newthorpe's retreat was final; no one save a close friend or two who
understood what his life had been, and how he dreaded for his daughter
the temptations which had warped her mother's womanhood. 'In any case,'
wrote Mrs. Tyrrell, his sister-in-law, when a year and a half had gone
by, 'you will of course let me have Annabel shortly. I pray you to
remember that she is turned seventeen. You surely won't deprive her of
every pleasure and every advantage?' And the recluse made answer: 'If
bolts and shackles were needful I would use them mercilessly rather
than allow my girl to enter your Middlesex pandemonium. Happily, the
fetters of her reason suffice. She is growing into a woman, and by the
blessing of the gods her soul shall be blown through and through with
the free air of heaven whilst yet the elements in her are blending to
their final shape.' Mrs. Tyrrell raised her eyebrows, and shook her
head, and talked sadly of 'poor Annabel,' who was buried alive.

She walked down to a familiar spot by the lake, where a rustic bench
was set under shadowing leafage; in front two skiffs were moored on the
strand. The sky was billowy with slow-travelling shapes of whiteness; a
warm wind broke murmuring wavelets along the pebbly margin. The
opposite slopes glassed themselves in the deep dark water--Swarth Fell,
Hallin Fell, Place Fell--one after the other; above the southern bend
of