me forward everything tended towards Knight Sutton: castles
in the air, persuasions, casual words which showed the turn of thought
of the brother and sister, met their mother every hour. Nor was she, as
Henrietta truly said, entirely averse to the change; she loved to talk
of what she still regarded as her home, but the shrinking dread of the
pang it must give to return to the scene of her happiest days, to the
burial-place of her husband, to the abode of his parents, had been
augmented by the tender over-anxious care of her mother, Mrs. Vivian,
who had strenuously endeavoured to prevent her from ever taking such a
proposal into consideration, and fairly led her at length to believe it
out of the question.

A removal would in fact have been impossible during the latter years of
Mrs. Vivian's life: but she had now been dead about eighteen months, her
daughter had recovered from the first grief of her loss, and there was
a general impression throughout the family that now was the time for
her to come amongst them again. For herself, the possibility was but
beginning to dawn upon her; just at first she joined in building castles
and imagining scenes at Knight Sutton, without thinking of their being
realized, or that it only depended upon her, to find herself at home
there; and when Frederick and Henrietta, encouraged by this manner of
talking, pressed it upon her, she would reply with some vague intention
of a return some time or other, but still thinking of it as something
far away, and rather to be dreaded than desired.

It was chiefly by dint of repetition that it fully entered her mind
that it was their real and earnest wish that she should engage to take
a lease of the Pleasance, and remove almost immediately from her present
abode; and from this time it might be perceived that she always shrank
from entering on the subject in a manner which gave them little reason
to hope.

"Yet, I think," said Henrietta to her brother one afternoon as they
were walking together on the sands; "I think if she once thought it was
right, if Uncle Geoffrey would tell her so, or if grandpapa would really
tell her that he wished it, I am quite sure that she would resolve upon
it."

"But why did he not do so long ago?" said Fred.

"O! because of grandmamma, I suppose," said Henrietta; "but he really
does wish it, and I should not at all wonder if the Busy Bee could put
it into his head to do it."

"Or if Uncle Geoffrey would advise h