could not help wondering how the master of Arden Court could ever bring himself to send out his daughter as a governess; and then she had a vague childish recollection that not tens of pounds, but hundreds, and even thousands, had been wanted to stop the gaps in her father's exchequer.

They drove through Holborough High Street, where there was the faint stir and bustle of early morning-windows opening, a house-maid kneeling on a door-step here and there, an occasional tradesman taking down his shutters. They drove past the fringe of prim little villas on the outskirts of the town, and away along a country road toward Arden; and once more Clarissa saw the things that she had dreamed of so often in her narrow white bed in the bleak dormitory at Belforêt. Every hedge-row and clump of trees from which the withered leaves were drifting in the autumn wind, every white-walled cottage with moss-grown thatch and rustic garden, woke a faint rapture in her breast. It was home! She remembered her old friends, the cottagers, and wondered whether Goody Mason were still alive, and whether Widow Green's fair-haired children would remember her. She had taught them at the Sunday-school; but they, too, must have grown from childhood to womanhood, like herself, and were out at service, most likely, leaving Mrs. Green's cottage lonely.

She thought of these simple things, poor child, having so little else to think about on this her coming home. She was not so foolish as to expect any warm welcome from her father. If he had brought himself just to tolerate her coming, she had sufficient reason to be grateful. It was only a drive of two miles from Holborough to Arden. They stopped at a lodge-gate presently -a little Gothic lodge, which was bright with scarlet geraniums and chrysanthemums, and made splendid by railings of blue and gilded iron-work. Every thing had a bright, new look which surprised Miss Lovel, who was not accustomed to see such perfect order or such fresh paint about her father's domain.

"How nice every thing looks!" she said. "Yes," answered her uncle, with a sigh; "the place is kept well enough nowadays."

A woman came out to open the gates-a brisk young person who was a stranger to Clarissanot the feeble old lodge-keeper she remembered in her childhood. The change, slight as it was, gave her a strange, chill feeling.

"I wonder how many people that I knew are dead?" she thought.

They drove into the park, and here, too, even in this autumn season, Clarissa perceived traces of care and order that were strange to her. The carriage road was newly graveled, the chaos of under-wood among the old trees had disappeared, the broad sweeps of grass were smooth and level as a lawn; and there were men at work in the early morning planting rare specimens of the fir tribe in a new inclosure, which filled a space that had been bared twenty years before by Mr. Lovel's depredations upon the timber.

All this bewildered Clarissa; but she was still more puzzled when, instead of approaching the Court, the fly turned sharply into a road leading across a thickly wooded portion of the park, through which there was a public right of way leading to the village of Arden.

And then, after staring at his niece's bewildered countenance for a few moments, Mr. Oliver exclaimed,

"Why, surely, Clary, your father told you-" "Told me what, uncle?"

"That he had sold Arden."

"Sold Arden! Oh, uncle, uncle!"

She burst into tears. Of all things upon this earth she had loved the grand old mansion where her childhood had been spent. She had so little else to love, poor lonely child, that it was scarcely strange she should attach herself to lifeless things. How fondly she had remembered the old place in all those dreary years of exile, dreaming of it as we dream of some lost friend! And it was gone from her forever! Her father had bartered away that most precious birthright.

"Oh, how could he do it! how could do it!" she cried, piteously.

"Why, my dear Clary, you can't suppose it was a matter of choice with him. Needs must when'-I dare say you know the vulgar proverb. Necessity has no law. Come, come, my dear, don't cry; your father won't like to see you with red eyes. It was very wrong of him not to tell you about the sale of Arden-excessively wrong. But that's just like Marmaduke Lovel; always ready to shirk any thing unpleasant, even to the writing of a disagreeable letter."

"Poor dear papa! I don't wonder he found it hard to write about such a thing; but it would have been better for me to have known. It is such a bitter disappointment to come home and find the dear old place gone from us. Has it been sold very long?"

"About two years. A rich manufacturer bought it-something in the cloth way, I believe. He has retired from business, however, and is said to be overwhelmingly rich. He has spent a great deal of money upon the Court already, and means to spend more, I hear."

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"Has he spoiled it-modernized it, or any thing of that kind ?"

"No; I am glad to say that he-or his architect perhaps has had the good taste to preserve the medieval character of the place. He has restored the stone-work, renewing all the delicate external tracery where it was lost or decayed, and has treated the interior in the same manner. I have dined with Mr. Granger once or twice since the work was finished, and I must say the place is now one of the finest in Yorkshire-perhaps the finest, in its peculiar way. I doubt if there is so perfect a specimen of Gothic domestic architecture in the county."

"And it is gone from us forever!" said Clarissa, with a profound sigh.

"Well, my dear Clary, it is a blow, certainly; I don't deny that. But there is a bright side to every thing; and really your father could not afford to live in the place. It was going to decay in the most disgraceful manner. He is better out of it; upon my word he is."

Clarissa could not see this. To lose Arden Court seemed to her unmitigated woe. She would rather have lived the dreariest, loneliest life in one corner of the grand old house than have occupied a modern palace. It was as if all the pleasant memories of her childhood had been swept away from her with the loss of her early home. This was indeed beginning the world; and a blank, dismal world it appeared to Clarissa Lovel on this melancholy October morning.

They stopped presently before a low wooden gate, and looking out of the window of the fly, Miss Lovel saw a cottage which she remembered as a dreary, uninhabited place, always to let; a cottage with a weedy garden, and a luxuriant growth of monthly roses and honeysuckle covering it from basement to roof; not a bad sort of place for a person of small means and pretensions, but oh! what a descent from the ancient splendor of Arden Court-that Arden which had belonged to the Lovels ever since the land on which it stood was given to Sir Warren Wyndham Lovel, knight, by his gracious master King Edward IV., in acknowledgment of that warrior's services in the great struggle between Lancaster and York!

It

There were old-fashioned casement windows on the upper story, and queer little dormers in the roof. Below, roomy bows had been added at a much later date than the building of the cottage. The principal door-way was sheltered by a rustic porch, spacious and picturesque, with a bench on each side of the entrance. The garden was tolerably large, and in decent order; and beyond the garden was a fine old orchard, divided from lawn and flower-beds only by a low hedge, full of bush roses and sweet-brier. was a very pretty place in summer, not unpicturesque even at this bleak season; but Clarissa was thinking of lost Arden, and she looked at Mill Cottage with mournful, unadmiring eyes. There had been a mill attached to the place once. The old building was there still, indeed, converted into a primitive kind of stable; hence its name of Mill Cottage. The stream still ran noisily a little way behind the house, and made the boundary which divided the orchard from the lands of the lord of Arden. Mill Cottage was on the very edge of Arden Court. Clarissa wondered that her father could have pitched his tent on the borders of his lost heritage.

"I think I would have gone to the other end of the world, had I been in his place," she said to herself.

An elderly woman-servant came out, in answer to the flyman's summons; and, at her call, a rough-looking young man emerged from the wooden gate opening into a rustic-looking stableyard, where the lower half of the old mill stood, half hidden by ivy and other greenery, and where there were dove-cotes and a dog-kennel.

Mr. Oliver superintended the removal of his niece's trunks, and then stepped back into the fly.

show for a couple of hours at least. Good-by, my dear; make yourself as comfortable as you can. And come and see your aunt as soon as you've recovered from your long journey; and keep up your spirits, my dear.-Martha, be sure you give Miss Lovel a good breakfast.-Drive back to the Rectory, coachman. -Good-by, Clarissa;" and feeling that he had shown his niece every kindness that the occasion required, Mr. Oliver bowled merrily homeward. He was a gentleman who took life easily-a pastor of the Broad-Church— tolerably generous and good to his poor; not given to abnormal services or daily morning prayer; content to do duty at Holborough parish church twice on a Sunday, and twice more in the week; hunting a little every season, in a black coat, for the benefit of his health, as he told his parishioners; and shooting a good deal; fond of a good horse, a good cellar, a good dinner, and well-filled conservatories and glass-houses; altogether a gentleman for whom life was a pleasant journey through a prosperous country. He had, some twenty years before, married Frances Lovel, a very handsome woman-just a little faded at the time of her marriage-without fortune. There were no children at Holborough Rectory, and every thing about the house and gardens bore that aspect of perfect order only possible to a domain in which there are none of those juvenile destroyers.

"Poor girl," Mr. Oliver muttered to himself, as he jogged comfortably homeward, wondering whether his people would have the good sense to cook "those grouse" for breakfast. "Poor Clary, it was very hard upon her; and just like Marmaduke, not to tell her."

CHAPTER III.

FATHER AND DAUGHTER.

WHILE Mr. Oliver went back to the Rectory, cheered by the prospect of possible grouse, Clarissa entered her new home, so utterly strange to her in its insignificance. The servant, Martha, who was a stranger to her, but who had a comfortable, friendly face, she thought, led her into a room at the back of the cottage, with a broad window opening on to a lawn, beyond which Clarissa saw the blue mill-stream. It was not a bad room at all: countrified-looking and old-fashioned, with a low ceiling and wainscoted walls. Miss Lovel recognized the ponderous old furniture from the breakfast-room at Arden-highbacked mahogany chairs of the early Georgian era, with broad cushioned seats covered with faded needle-work; a curious old oval diningtable, capable of accommodating about six; and some slim Chippendale coffee-tables; and chiffoniers, upon which there were a few chipped treasures of old Battersea and Bow china. walls were half lined with her father's booksrare old books in handsome bindings. His easychair, a most luxurious one, stood in a sheltered corner of the hearth, with a crimson silk bannerscreen hanging from the mantel-piece beside it, and a tiny table close at hand, on which there were a noble silver-mounted meerschaum and a curious old china jar for tobacco. The oval table was neatly laid for breakfast, and a handsome brown setter lay basking in the light of the fire.

The

Remembering what Mr. Oliver had said, Clarissa was not much disturbed by this intelligence. She was stooping to caress the brown setter, who had been sniffing at her dress, and seemed anxious to inaugurate a friendship with her.

"This is a favorite of papa's, I suppose?" she said.

"Oh Lord, yes, miss. Our master do make a tremenjous fuss about Ponto. I think he's fonder of that beast than any human creature. Eliza shall show you your room, miss, while I bring in the tea-pot and such like. There's only me and Eliza, who is but a bit of a girl; and John Thomas, the groom, that brought your boxes in just now. It's a change for your pa from the Court, and all the servants he had there; but he do bear it like a true Christian, if ever there was one." Clarissa Lovel might have wondered a little to hear this-Christianity not being the dominant note in her father's character; but it was only like her father to refrain from complaint in the hearing of such a person as honest Martha. A rosy-faced girl of about fifteen conducted Miss Lovel to a pleasant bedroom with three small windows-one curiously placed in an angle of the room, and from which, above a sweep of golden-tinted woodland, Clarissa could see the Gothic chimneys of Arden Court. She stood at this window for nearly ten minutes, gazing out across those autumnal woods, and wondering how ever her father had nerved himself for the sacrifice.

She turned away from the little casement at last with a heavy sigh, and began to take off her things. She bathed her face and head in cold water, brushed out her long, dark hair, and changed her thick merino traveling dress for a fresher costume. While she was doing these things her thoughts went back to her companion of last night's journey; and, with a sudden flush of shame, she remembered his embarrassed look when she had spoken of her father as the owner of Arden Court. He had been to Arden, he had told her, yet had not seen her father. She had not been particularly surprised by this, supposing that he had gone to the Court as an ordinary sight-seer. Her father had never opened the place to the public, but he had seldom refused any tourist's request to explore it.

But now she understood that curious puzzled look of the stranger's, and felt bitterly ashamed of her error. Had he thought her some barefaced impostor, she wondered? She was disturbed in these reflections by the trim rosycheeked house-maid, who came to tell her that breakfast had been on the table nearly a quarter of an hour. But in the comfortable parlor down stairs all the time she was trying to do some poor justice to Martha's omelet her thoughts dwelt persistently upon the unknown of the railway carriage, and upon the unlucky mistake which she had made as to her father's position.

"He could never guess the truth," she said to herself. "He could never imagine that I was going home, and yet did not know that my birthplace had been sold."

He was so complete a stranger to her-she did not even know his name-so it could surely matter very little whether he thought well or ill of her. And yet she could not refrain from torturing herself with all manner of annoying suppositions as to what he might think. Miss Lovel's character was by no means faultless, and

pride was one of the strongest ingredients in it. A generous and somewhat lofty nature, perhaps, but unschooled and unchastened as yet.

After a very feeble attempt at breakfast, Clarissa went out into the garden, closely attended by Ponto, who seemed to have taken a wonderful fancy to her. She was very glad to be loved by something on her return home, even a dog. She went out through the broad window, and explored garden and orchard, and wandered up and down by the grassy bank of the stream. She was fain to own that the place was pretty; and she fancied how well she might have loved it if she had been born here, and had never been familiar with the broad terraces and verdant slopes of Arden Court. She walked in the garden till the village church clock struck ten, and then went hastily in, half afraid lest her father should have come down to the parlor in her absence, and should be offended at not finding her ready to receive him.

'She need not have feared this. Mr. Lovel was rarely offended by any thing that did not cause him physical discomfort.

"How do you do, my dear ?" he said, as she came into the room, in very much the same tone he might have employed had they seen each other every day for the last twelve months. "Be sure you never do that again, if you have the faintest regard for me.'

"Do what, papa?"

"Leave that window open when you go out. I found the room a perfect ice-house just now. It was very neglectful of Martha to allow it. You'd better use the door at the end of the passage in future when you go into the garden. It's only a little more trouble, and I can't stand open windows at this time of year."

"I will be sure to do so, papa," Clarissa answered, meekly.

She went up to her father and kissed him, the warmth and spontaneity of their greeting a little diminished by this reproof about the window; but Clarissa had not expected a very affectionate reception, and was hardly disappointed. She had only a blank, hopeless kind of feeling—a settled conviction that there was no love for her here, and that there had never been any.

"My dear father," she began, tenderly, "my uncle told me about the sale of Arden. I was so shocked by the news-so sorry-for your sake."

"And for your own sake too, I suppose," her father answered, bitterly. "The less this subject is spoken of between us in future the better we shall get on together, Clarissa.'

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"I will keep silence, papa."

Not a

"Be sure you do so," Mr. Lovel said, sternly. And then, with a sudden passion and inconsistency that startled his daughter, he went on: 'Yes, I have sold Arden-every acre. rood of the land that has belonged to my race from generation to generation since Edward IV. was king is left to me. And I have planted myself here-here at the very gates of my lost home

so that I may drain the bitter cup of humiliation to the dregs. The fools who call themselves my friends think that because I can endure to live here I am indifferent to all I have lost; that I am an eccentric bookworm-an easy-going philosophical recluse, content to dawdle away the remnant of my days among old books. It