not without a certain largeness of nature irreconcilable
with the most dastardly of all the weapons that envy or hatred can
supply to the vile. She had too lofty a self-esteem and too decorous a
regard for the moral sentiment of the world that she typified, to do,
or connive at, an act which degrades the gentlewoman. Putting her aside,
what other female enemy had Lilian provoked? No matter! What other woman
at L---- was worth the condescension of a conjecture?

After listening to all that the ablest of my professional brethren
in the metropolis could suggest to guide me, and trying in vain their
remedies, I brought back my charge to L----. Retaining my former
residence for the visits of patients, I engaged, for the privacy of my
home, a house two miles from the town, secluded in its own grounds, and
guarded by high walls.

Lilian's mother removed to my mournful dwelling-place. Abbot's House, in
the centre of that tattling coterie, had become distasteful to her, and
to me it was associated with thoughts of anguish and of terror. I could
not, without a shudder, have entered its grounds,--could not, without a
stab at the heart, have seen again the old fairy-land round the Monks'
Well, nor the dark cedar-tree under which Lilian's hand had been placed
in mine; and a superstitious remembrance, banished while Lilian's angel
face had brightened the fatal precincts, now revived in full force. The
dying man's curse--had it not been fulfilled?

A new occupant for the old house was found within a week after Mrs.
Ashleigh had written from London to a house-agent at L----, intimating
her desire to dispose of the lease. Shortly before we had gone to
Windermere, Miss Brabazon had become enriched by a liberal life-annuity
bequeathed to her by her uncle, Sir Phelim. Her means thus enabled her
to move from the comparatively humble lodging she had hitherto occupied
to Abbot's House; but just as she had there commenced a series of
ostentatious entertainments, implying an ambitious desire to dispute
with Mrs. Poyntz the sovereignty of the Hill, she was attacked by some
severe malady which appeared complicated with spinal disease, and after
my return to L---- I sometimes met her, on the spacious platform of the
Hill, drawn along slowly in a Bath chair, her livid face peering forth
from piles of Indian shawls and Siberian furs, and the gaunt figure
of Dr. Jones stalking by her side, taciturn and gloomy as some sincere
mourner who conducts to