now nothing remained to them of all their wide and fair estates, save a grim old mansion, sinking, like the fortunes of its owners, to gradual decay, and shut up in a great walled garden, in the sombrest portion of the quiet, almost solemn district of St. Croix.

Mrs. Denham lived alone with her youngest son in this wide, dreary house, that even the summer sunshine could not brighten. She was a grim old lady, contemplative, ascetic, saturnine, holding peculiar religious views, which it would have pleased her to enforce on every member of the human family. As it was, she made herself eminently disagreeable, and doomed all persons who presumed to differ from her to perdition, her only daughter and her sons among the rest. I could have forgiven her for everything but her harshness towards Cyril, and her fearful habit of misquoting Scripture; not saying the wrong words, but applying them as He who gave the blessed Book of Life, in all His teaching, all His dealings with the world, never did apply them, never meant them to be understood. Mr. Denham had departed this life long before the time of which I write, and his relict still wore the most uncompromising "widow's weeds." Oh, what depths of rusty crape, what heavy bombazine, what rolls of crimped white muslin round the: austere face, that always seemed to look rebuke at some one's vanities and sins! Poor Cyril! what a life his would have been, if he had not known the way to Forest Range, and taken it as often as he dared ! The eldest son, Edward Denham, the reputed head of the family, had married Sir John Ashburner's only sister; she had died after a brief and, some said, far from happy union. Her young, bright life extinguished,— so her brother said,-in the deepening gloom that gathered round the Denhams. Her husband had married again, his new wife being a lady of political connexions, and he had received some diplomatic appointment which kept him a constant resident at Vienna. He wrote home very rarely, and seemed to have freed himself from all family solicitudes, as well

as from any share in the melancholy fortunes of his kindred. He openly relinquished his position as eldest son, to his second brother, Augustine, who, however, did not care to accept the onerous distinction; he went to India, where he gained some wealth and rank, and married an heiress, who was understood to have great store of rupees, and to be of doubtful parentage, half-caste, to make the best of it. Augustine Denham became so thoroughly Indianised, that he never thought about his relatives at home, and for some years his native city scarcely knew whether he was dead or living. The third son, Gregory, had invested his scanty patrimony in commercial enterprise, and he was as thoroughly lost to his family, as his elder brothers were. His home was in Peru; and it was current in Southchester that he was the owner of innumerable gold-mines, and lived half-way up the Andes, and rode about the country on a vicuna, or alpaca-sheep.

He might have lived on the topmost peak of Chimborazo, or ruled the ancient City of the Sun, or been elected Inca, for all they knew about him. Gregory Denham was little more than an authenticated myth. Then came a daughter, the only one, living in Dublin, and married to a Mr. Erskine. She always chose to consider the Ashburners as relations, and visited them at certain intervals. She had yellow hair, a skin of dazzling fairness, smooth as ivory, and cold, blue glittering eyes. I never liked her, though she was Cyril's sister; and I am pretty sure that Lady Ashburner always experienced a sense of satisfaction, a quiet, unexpressed relief, when Mrs. Erskine took herself away from Forest Range. As to Cyril, I shall not describe him in a preliminary chapter; you will know enough about him if you read this story to the end.

10

CHAPTER II.

AGNES CRAVEN.

"WHAT is the matter, Elizabeth?" asked Lady Ashburner of her daughter, who was ranging the spacious drawing-room with the air of a thoroughly unsettled person. It was a clear, cold February evening, and the lamps were lighted. Lady Ashburner was bending over her embroidery frame; I was knitting,-my favourite fancy-work, be it understood. Elizabeth was certainly taking "the constitutional," which she had neglected in the sunny, bright forenoon; pausing now and then to run over an air with one hand on the piano-forte, or striking a few chords on my harp, or peering out behind the curtains into the deepening darkness of the early evening. She turned from the window to answer her mother's question.

"Nothing in the world, Mamma, only I am fidgetty." "Then, my dear, I wish you would compose yourself; you are disturbing Janet, and you make me positively nervous. Is it the anticipation of our guest's arrival that disturbs your equanimity?"

"I suppose it is, Mamma. To tell the truth, I wish she was not coming. Papa says she is very clever : now I do dislike clever women! they are generally so pedantic, so satirical. Does Miss Craven wear blue spectacles, Mamma?"

"My dear, Miss Craven is too young to be very learned. I should say she was sensible and wellinformed, probably accomplished to a certain extent; and I fancy she has literary tastes; she has been abroad

too, and has seen the world. I have no doubt you will find her an agreeable companion."

"For all that, I wish she was not going to be our guest just yet; I am quite content with your companionship and Janet's: don't try to talk me over, please, Mamma; you cannot reconcile me to the change.

"Very well, my dear; then of course I shall not try. But we must not call Miss Craven our guest. This house is now her only home, and I hope we shall be able to make her very happy. You are so near her own age, that, in spite of all your declarations, I look to you to help us.'

Mamma, tell me all about Miss Craven; it will pass the time away. I will sit here at your feet-no, I shall not burn my face,-I shall bring the bannerscreen round, so. Now, then, how old do you say she is? and have you ever seen her?"

"She is past nineteen, nearly twenty, I believe." "How old!" pouted Elizabeth: "I hoped she was eighteen. People at twenty get so rational."

"Do they? I hope your own case may not prove a solitary exception to the rule. But to reply to your second question: I saw Miss Craven once, some years ago, when Papa and I were travelling in the North. She was a quiet, shy little thing, with no pretensions to beauty, but reported to possess more than ordinary talent. Indeed I remember, whenever she was present during our conversations, how beaming with intelligence were her soft grey eyes; and though she never spoke unless addressed, I fancied that she understood nearly all that was going on, and formed her own opinions accordingly.'

"There, Janet, you hear! I knew she was shockingly sagacious; I dare say she likes a knotty argument, and knows all about Divinity, and can quote 'the Fathers,' whatever or whoever they may be. 'O Misericordia!' as the girls used to say at school. I only hope she will not expect me to interest myself in the abstruse sciences, or to read her musty tomes,

or to learn to write hexameters. But go on, Mamma: how came Papa to be her guardian?”

"Her father, you know, was the rector of a scattered country parish in Westmoreland; and he and your papa were dear friends in their school and college days. Both were Rugbæans, both were Oriel men! Mr. Craven married early: I knew nothing of his wife, save that she was very beautiful, that he loved her passionately, and that she was the collateral member of a noble house, and was never forgiven by her friends for marrying an obscure clergyman, with small private fortune, no patronage, and an unambitious nature. Their displeasure, however, never seriously affected her or her husband; she had no parents, and was at liberty to please herself. She inherited some inconsiderable property, which, joined to Mr. Craven's private means and his perferment, made out a very comfortable income for country-folk, whose pleasures were all strictly intellectual or poetically Arcadian. Mr. Craven always spoke of his brief married life as a period of blessedness past all description. ‘It was all,' he said, 'one sweet long summer-day, without a cloud!' But the night came prematurely: Mrs. Craven died, leaving this only child, an infant of a few months old. From that hour Mr. Craven was an altered man; he never looked up again, as people say; he secluded himself from all society, appearing in public only, when imperatively summoned forth by the duties of his profession. He seemed immersed in abstruse study, and I believe he wrote a poem, which was never published. Some part of every day he spent in the church, mourning over the grave of his lost wife. Finally, when his little girl was about twelve years of age, his health, which had been gradually declining, entirely gave way; he became very ill, and he knew, without the doctor's opinion, that his days were numbered-he seemed very glad to die."

"Poor man! I do not wonder at it."

66

It was then he sent for your papa, to help him in the arrangement of his temporal affairs. He regretted