, even sheep were barely
profitable; labour was scarce and costly. Regarded as a speculation, I
could not wonder that my predecessor fled in fear from his domain. Had
I invested the bulk of my capital in this lordly purchase, I should
have deemed myself a ruined man; but a villa near London, with a hundred
acres, would have cost me as much to buy, and thrice as much to keep
up. I could afford the investment I had made. I found a Scotch bailiff
already on the estate, and I was contented to escape from rural
occupations, to which I brought no experience, by making it worth his
while to serve me with zeal. Two domestics of my own, and two who
had been for many years with Mrs. Ashleigh, had accompanied us: they
remained faithful and seemed contented. So the clockwork of our mere
household arrangements went on much the same as in our native home.
Lilian was not subjected to the ordinary privations and discomforts that
await the wife even of the wealthy emigrant. Alas! would she have heeded
them if she had been?

The change of scene wrought a decided change for the better in her
health and spirits, but not such as implied a dawn of reviving reason.
But her countenance was now more rarely overcast. Its usual aspect was
glad with a soft mysterious smile. She would murmur snatches of songs,
that were partly borrowed from English poets, and partly glided away
into what seemed spontaneous additions of her own,--wanting intelligible
meaning, but never melody nor rhyme. Strange, that memory and
imitation--the two earliest parents of all inventive knowledge--should
still be so active, and judgment--the after faculty, that combines the
rest into purpose and method-be annulled!

Julius Faber I see continually, though his residence is a few miles
distant. He is sanguine as to Lilian's ultimate recovery; and, to my
amazement and to my envy, he has contrived, by some art which I cannot
attain, to establish between her and himself intelligible communion. She
comprehends his questions, when mine, though the simplest, seem to her
in unknown language; and he construes into sense her words, that to me
are meaningless riddles.

"I was right," he said to me one day, leaving her seated in the garden
beside her quiet, patient mother, and joining me where I lay--listless
yet fretful--under the shadeless gum-trees, gazing not on the flocks
and fields that I could call my own, but on the far mountain range, from
which the arch of the horizon seeme