nt to be alone, had given up herself much
to her father since his great sorrow; but she felt that her efforts to
distract him from his broodings were not eminently successful, and
she hailed with a feeling of relief the establishment of Nigel in the
parish, and the consequent intimacy that arose between him and her
father.

Nigel and Myra were necessarily under these circumstances thrown much
together. As time advanced he passed his evenings generally at the hall,
for he was a proficient in the only game which interested Mr. Ferrars,
and that was chess. Reading and writing all day, Mr. Ferrars required
some remission of attention, and his relaxation was chess. Before the
games, and between the games, and during delightful tea-time, and for
the happy quarter of an hour which ensued when the chief employment of
the evening ceased, Nigel appealed much to Myra, and endeavoured to draw
out her mind and feelings. He lent her books, and books that favoured,
indirectly at least, his own peculiar views--volumes of divine poesy
that had none of the twang of psalmody, tales of tender and sometimes
wild and brilliant fancy, but ever full of symbolic truth.

Chess-playing requires complete abstraction, and Nigel, though he was
a double first, occasionally lost a game from a lapse in that condensed
attention that secures triumph. The fact is, he was too frequently
thinking of something else besides the moves on the board, and his ear
was engaged while his eye wandered, if Myra chanced to rise from her
seat or make the slightest observation.

The woods were beginning to assume the first fair livery of autumn,
when it is beautiful without decay. The lime and the larch had not yet
dropped a golden leaf, and the burnished beeches flamed in the sun.
Every now and then an occasional oak or elm rose, still as full of deep
green foliage as if it were midsummer; while the dark verdure of
the pines sprang up with effective contrast amid the gleaming and
resplendent chestnuts.

There was a glade at Hurstley, bounded on each side with masses of
yew, their dark green forms now studded with crimson berries. Myra was
walking one morning in this glade when she met Nigel, who was on one of
his daily pilgrimages, and he turned round and walked by her side.

"I am sure I cannot give you news of your brother," he said, "but I have
had a letter this morning from Endymion. He seems to take great interest
in his debating club."

"I am so glad he has