assed where her mother's had been.

My lord's gentleman, from whom I asked as many questions as I durst,
said that the Manor House was at the foot of the Cumberland Fells, and
a very grand place; that an old Miss Furnivall, a great-aunt of my
lord's, lived there, with only a few servants; but that it was a very
healthy place, and my lord had thought that it would suit Miss Rosamond
very well for a few years, and that her being there might perhaps amuse
his old aunt.

I was bidden by my lord to have Miss Rosamond's things ready by a
certain day. He was a stern, proud man, as they say all the Lords
Furnivall were; and he never spoke a word more than was necessary. Folk
did say he had loved my young mistress; but that, because she knew that
his father would object, she would never listen to him, and married Mr.
Esthwaite; but I don't know. He never married, at any rate. But he
never took much notice of Miss Rosamond; which I thought he might have
done if he had cared for her dead mother. He sent his gentleman with us
to the Manor House, telling him to join him at Newcastle that same
evening; so there was no great length of time for him to make us known
to all the strangers before he, too, shook us off; and we were left,
two lonely young things (I was not eighteen) in the great old Manor
House. It seems like yesterday that we drove there. We had left our own
dear parsonage very early, and we had both cried as if our hearts would
break, though we were travelling in my lord's carriage, which I thought
so much of once. And now it was long past noon on a September day, and
we stopped to change horses for the last time at a little smoky town,
all full of colliers and miners. Miss Rosamond had fallen asleep, but
Mr. Henry told me to waken her, that she might see the park and the
Manor House as we drove up. I thought it rather a pity; but I did what
he bade me, for fear he should complain of me to my lord. We had left
all signs of a town, or even a village, and were then inside the gates
of a large wild park--not like the parks here in the south, but with
rocks, and the noise of running water, and gnarled thorn-trees, and old
oaks, all white and peeled with age.

The road went up about two miles, and then we saw a great and stately
house, with many trees close around it, so close that in some places
their branches dragged against the walls when the wind blew; and some
hung broken down; for no one seemed to take much charge of th