nt.

Six years had changed Pauline Darrell from a beautiful girl to a
magnificent woman; her beauty was of that grand and queenly kind that of
itself is a noble dowry. The years had but added to it. They had given a
more statuesque grace to the perfect figure; they had added tenderness,
thought, and spirituality to the face; they had given to her beauty a
charm that it had never worn in her younger days.

Miss Darrell, of Darrell Court, had made for herself a wonderful
reputation. There was no estate in England so well managed as hers. From
one end to the other the Darrell domain was, people said, a garden.
Pauline had done away with the old cottages and ill-drained farm-houses,
and in their stead pretty and commodious buildings had been erected. She
had fought a long and fierce battle with ignorance and prejudice, and
she had won.

She had established schools where children were taught, first to be good
Christians, and then good citizens, and where useful knowledge was made
much of. She had erected almshouses for the poor, and a church where
rich and poor, old and young, could worship God together. The people
about her rose up and called her blessed; tenants, dependents, servants,
all had but one word for her, and that was of highest praise. To do good
seemed the object of her life, and she had succeeded so far.

No young queen was ever more popular or more beloved than this lady with
her sweet, grave smile, her tender, womanly ways, her unconscious
grandeur of life. She made no stir, no demonstration, though she was the
head of a grand old race, the representative of an old honored family,
the holder of a great inheritance; she simply did her duty as nobly as
she knew how to do it. There was no thought of self left in her, her
whole energies were directed for the good of others. If Sir Oswald could
have known how the home he loved was cared for, he would have been proud
of his successor. The hall itself, the park, the grounds, were all in
perfect order. People wondered how it was all arranged by this lady,
who never seemed hurried nor talked of the work she did.

Pauline occupied herself incessantly, for the bright hopes of girlhood,
she felt, were hers no longer; she had admitted that the romance, the
passion, the poetry of her youth were unforgotten, but she tried to
think them dead. People wondered at her gravity. She had many admirers,
but she never showed the least partiality for any of them. There seemed
to