''Tis a barb. I brought it over with me.'

''Tis a beautiful creature,' said Miss Temple.

'Hear that, Selim,' said Ferdinand; 'prick up thine ears, my steed. I
perceive that you are an accomplished horsewoman, Miss Temple. You know
our country, I dare say, well?'

'I wish to know it better. This is only the second summer that we have
passed at Ducie.'

'By-the-bye, I suppose you know my landlord, Captain Armine?' said Mr.
Temple.

'No,' said Ferdinand; 'I do not know a single person in the county. I
have myself scarcely been at Armine for these five years, and my father
and mother do not visit anyone.'

'What a beautiful oak!' exclaimed Miss Temple, desirous of turning the
conversation.

'It has the reputation of being planted by Sir Francis Walsingham,' said
Ferdinand. 'An ancestor of mine married his daughter. He was the father
of Sir Walsingham, the portrait in the gallery with the white stick. You
remember it?'

'Perfectly: that beautiful portrait! It must be, at all events, a very
old tree.'

'There are few things more pleasing to me than an ancient place,' said
Mr. Temple.

'Doubly pleasing when in the possession of an ancient family,' added his
daughter.

'I fear such feelings are fast wearing away,' said Ferdinand.

'There will be a reaction,' said Mr. Temple.

'They cannot destroy the poetry of time,' said the lady.

'I hope I have no very inveterate prejudices,' said Ferdinand; 'but
I should be sorry to see Armine in any other hands than our own, I
confess.'

'I never would enter the park again,' said Miss Temple.

'So far as worldly considerations are concerned,' continued Ferdinand,
'it would perhaps be much better for us if we were to part with it.'

'It must, indeed, be a costly place to keep up,' said Mr. Temple.

'Why, as for that,' said Ferdinand, 'we let the kine rove and the sheep
browse where our fathers hunted the stag and flew their falcons. I think
if they were to rise from their graves they would be ashamed of us.'

'Nay!' said Miss Temple, 'I think yonder cattle are very picturesque.
But the truth is, anything would look well in such a park as this. There
is such a variety of prospect.'

The park of Armine indeed differed materially from those vamped-up
sheep-walks and ambitious paddocks which are now honoured with the
title. It was, in truth, the old chase, and little shorn of its original
proportions. It was many miles in circumference, abounding in hill and
dale, a