ghtful neighbourhoods, would just
exclaim, "Charming! but rather more, I fancy, than we require, for we
mean to be very quiet till my girl is presented."

That young lady was now thirteen, and though her parents were careful
to say nothing in her presence which would materially reveal their real
situation, for which they intended very gradually to prepare her, the
scrutinising powers with which nature had prodigally invested their
daughter were not easily baffled. She asked no questions, but nothing
seemed to escape the penetrative glance of that large dark blue eye,
calm amid all the mystery, and tolerating rather than sharing the
frequent embrace of her parents. After a while her brother came home
from Eton, to which he was never to return. A few days before this
event she became unusually restless, and even agitated. When he arrived,
neither Mr. nor Mrs. Ferrars was at home. He knocked gaily at the
door, a schoolboy's knock, and was hardly in the hall when his name
was called, and he caught the face of his sister, leaning over the
balustrade of the landing-place. He ran upstairs with wondrous speed,
and was in an instant locked in her arms. She kissed him and kissed him
again, and when he tried to speak, she stopped his mouth with kisses.
And then she said, "Something has happened. What it is I cannot make
out, but we are to have no more ponies."

CHAPTER XI

At the foot of the Berkshire downs, and itself on a gentle elevation,
there is an old hall with gable ends and lattice windows, standing in
grounds which once were stately, and where there are yet glade-like
terraces of yew trees, which give an air of dignity to a neglected
scene. In the front of the hall huge gates of iron, highly wrought, and
bearing an ancient date as well as the shield of a noble house, opened
on a village green, round which were clustered the cottages of the
parish with only one exception, and that was the vicarage house, a
modern building, not without taste, and surrounded by a small but
brilliant garden. The church was contiguous to the hall, and had been
raised by the lord on a portion of his domain. Behind the hall and its
enclosure, the country was common land but picturesque. It had once
been a beech forest, and though the timber had been greatly cleared,
the green land was still occasionally dotted, sometimes with groups and
sometimes with single trees, while the juniper which here abounded, and
rose to a great height, gave a