a sense of the wealth and long-standing of its
owners.

The plural has slipped from my pen, and perhaps it is right; for the
house looked as if it had had many owners, and all of them had been
rich.

Now, there was but one owner,--the lady who descended from that
lumbering, heavy coach, with the two great leathern wings on each side
of the door. She was dressed in widow's weeds, and she had every right
to wear them. Though two-and-twenty only, she stood there orphan,
heiress, and widow. She had known many changes of condition, but not of
fate, and they did not seem to have affected her much. Of high-born and
proud parentage, she had been an only child for many years before her
parents' death. She had been spoiled, to use a common, but not always
appropriate phrase; for there are some people who cannot be spoiled,
either because the ethereal essence within them is incorruptible, or
because there is no ethereal essence to spoil at all. However, she had
been spoiled very successfully by fate, fortune, and kind friends. She
had never been contradicted in her life; she had never been
disappointed--but once. She had travelled, seen strange countries--which
was rare in those days with women--had enjoyed many things. She had
married a handsome, foolish man, whom she chose--few knew rightly why.
She had lost both her parents not long after; got tired of her husband,
and lost him too, just when the loss could leave little behind but a
decent regret, which she cultivated as a slight stimulant to keep her
mind from stagnating. And now, without husband, child, or parents, she
returned to the house of her childhood, which she had not seen for five
long years.

Is that all her history? No, not exactly all. There is one little
incident which may as well be referred to here. Her parents had entered
into an arrangement for her marriage with a very different man from him
whom she afterwards chose,--Sir Philip Hastings; and foolishly they had
told her of what had been done, before the young man's own assent had
been given. She did not see much of him--certainly not enough to fall in
love with him. She even thought him a strange, moody youth; but yet
there was something in his moodiness and eccentricity which excited her
fancy. The reader knows that he chose for himself; and the lady also
married immediately after.

Thus had passed for her a part of life's pageant; and now she came to
her own native dwelling, to let the rest march by