us.'

Mrs. Darrell received the compliment very modestly, and then tried
to persuade Milly to sing or play; but the girl declined resolutely.
Nothing could induce her to touch the piano after that brilliant
performance.

The next day and several days passed very quietly, and in a kind of
monotonous comfort. The rector of the parish dined with us one day,
and on another a neighbouring squire with his wife and three
daughters. Milly and I spent a good deal of our time in the gardens
and on the sea-shore, with Julian Stormont for our companion, while
Mr. and Mrs. Darrell rode or drove together. My darling could see
that she was not expected to join them in these rides and drives,
and I think this confirmed her idea that her father was in a manner
lost to her.

'I must try to be satisfied with this new state of things, Mary,'
she said, with a sigh of resignation. 'If my father is happy, I
ought to be contented. But O, my dear, if you could have seen us
together a year ago, you would know how much I have lost.'

I had been at Thornleigh a little more than a week, when Mr. Darrell
one morning proposed a drive to a place called Cumber Priory, which
was one of the show-houses of the neighbourhood. It was a very old
place, he said, and had been one of the earliest monastic
settlements in that part of the country. Milly and her father and
her cousin had been there a great many times, and the visit was
proposed for the gratification of Mrs. Darrell and myself.

She assented graciously, as she always did to every proposition of
her husband's, and we started soon after breakfast in the barouche,
with Julian Stormont on horseback. The drive was delightful; for,
after leaving the hilly district about Thornleigh, our road lay
through a wood, where the trees were of many hundred years' growth.
I recognised groups of oak and beech that I had seen among the
sketches in Milly's portfolio.

On the other side of the wood we came to some dilapidated-looking
gates, with massive stone escutcheons on the great square pillars.
There was a lodge, but it was evidently unoccupied, and Mr.
Darrell's footman got down from the box to open the gates. Within we
made the circuit of a neglected lawn, divided from a park by a sunk
fence, across which some cattle stared at us in a lazy manner as we
drove past them. The house was a long low building with heavily
mullioned windows, and was flanked by gothic towers. Most of the
windows had closed shutt