tranger.

"Quite. The walk will do away with this faintness. It is not the first
fall I have had."

The stranger whispered to young Mr. Threpp--who was as good-natured a
young fellow as ever lived. Would he consent to forego the sport that
day and lead his horse to Mr. Peveril's? If so, he would accompany the
young lady and give her the support of his arm.

So William Threpp rode off, leading Mr. Hamlyn's horse, and Miss Monk
accepted the stranger's arm. He told her a little about himself as they
walked along. It might not have been an ominous commencement, but
intimacies have grown sometimes out of a slighter introduction. Their
nearest way led past the Vicarage. Mr. Grame saw them from its windows
and came running out.

"Has any accident taken place?" he asked hurriedly. "I hope not."

Eliza Monk's face flushed. He had been Lucy's husband several months
now, but she could not yet suddenly meet him without a thrill of
emotion. Lucy ran out next; the pretty young wife for whom she had been
despised. Eliza answered Mr. Grame curtly, nodded to Lucy, and passed
on.

"And, as I was telling you," continued Mr. Hamlyn, "when this property
was left to me in England, I made it a plea for throwing up my post in
India, and came home. I landed about six weeks ago, and have been since
busy in London with lawyers. Peveril, whom I knew in the days gone by,
wrote to invite me to come to him here on a week's visit, before he and
his wife leave for the South of France."

"They are going to winter there for Mrs. Peveril's health," observed
Eliza. "Peacock's Range, the place they live at, belongs to my cousin,
Harry Carradyne. Did I understand you to say that you were not an
Englishman?"

"I was born in the West Indies. My family were English and had settled
there."

"What a coincidence!" exclaimed Eliza Monk with a smile. "My mother was
a West Indian, and I was born there.--There's my home, Leet Hall!"

"A fine old place," cried Mr. Hamlyn, regarding the mansion before him.

"You may well say 'old,'" remarked the young lady. "It has been the
abode of the Monk family from generation to generation. For my part, I
sometimes half wish it would fall down that we might get away to a more
lively locality. Church Leet is a dead-alive place at best."

"We always want what we have not," laughed Mr. Hamlyn. "I would give all
I am worth to possess an ancestral home, no matter if it were grim and
gloomy. We who can boast of only modern