r
her destination, very sorry, as am I, that she could not enjoy first a
flying visit to Elverston, but in high spirits, notwithstanding, at the new
life and sights before her.'

At the door my beloved old friend, Mary Quince, awaited me.

'Am I going with you, Miss Maud?'

I burst into tears and clasped her in my arms.

'I'm not,' said Mary, very sorrowfully; 'and I never was from you yet,
Miss, since you wasn't the length of my arm.'

And kind old Mary began to cry with me.

'Bote you are coming in a few days, Mary Quince,' expostulated Madame. 'I
wonder you are soche fool. What is two, three days? Bah! nonsense, girl.'

Another farewell to poor Mary Quince, quite bewildered at the suddenness of
her bereavement. A serious and tremulous bow from our little old butler on
the steps. Madame bawling through the open window to the driver to make
good speed, and remember that we had but nineteen minutes to reach the
station. Away we went. Old Crowle's iron _grille_ rolled back before us.
I looked on the receding landscape, the giant trees--the palatial,
time-stained mansion. A strange conflict of feelings, sweet and bitter,
rose and mingled in the reverie. Had I been too hard and suspicious with
the inhabitants of that old house of my family? Was my uncle _justly_
indignant? Was I ever again to know such pleasant rambles as some of those
I had enjoyed with dear Millicent through the wild and beautiful woodlands
I was leaving behind me? And there, with my latest glimpse of the front
of Bartram-Haugh, I beheld dear old Mary Quince gazing after us. Again
my tears flowed. I waved my handkerchief from the window; and now the
park-wall hid all from view, and at a great pace, throught the steep wooded
glen, with the rocky and precipitous character of a ravine, we glided; and
when the road next emerged, Bartram-Haugh was a misty mass of forest and
chimneys, slope and hollow, and we within a few minutes of the station.

CHAPTER LX

_THE JOURNEY_

Waiting for the train, as we stood upon the platform, I looked back again
toward the wooded uplands of Bartram; and far behind, the fine range of
mountains, azure and soft in the distance, beyond which lay beloved old
Knowl, and my lost father and mother, and the scenes of my childhood, never
embittered except by the sibyl who sat beside me.

Under happier circumstances I should have been, at my then early age, quite
wild with pleasurable excitement on entering London for