windows; a van laden with articles of furniture
stood before the door; a servant in livery was
beside it giving directions to the men who were
unloading. Evidently some family was just
entering into possession. I felt somewhat ashamed
of my trespass, and turned round to
retrace my steps. I had retreated but a few yards,
when I saw before me, at the entrance gates, Mr.
Vigors, walking beside a lady apparently of
middle age; while, just at hand, a path cut through
the shrubs gave view of a small wicket-gate at
the end of the grounds. I felt unwilling not
only to meet the lady, whom I guessed to be the
new occupier, and to whom I should have to
make a somewhat awkward apology for intrusion,
but still more to encounter the scornful
look of Mr. Vigors, in what, appeared to my
pride a false or undignified position. Involuntarily,
therefore, I turned down the path which
would favour my escape unobserved. When
about half way between the house and the wicket-
gate, the shrubs that had clothed the path on
either side suddenly opened to the left, bringing
into view a circle of sward, surrounded by
irregular fragments of old brickwork, partially covered
with ferns, creepers or rock-plants, weeds or
wild flowers, and in the centre of the circle a
fountain, or rather water-cistern, over which was
built a Gothic monastic dome, or canopy, resting
on small Norman columns, time-worn, dilapidated.
A large willow overhung this unmistakable
relic of the ancient abbey. There was an air of
antiquity, romance, legend about this spot, so
abruptly disclosed amidst the delicate green of
the young shrubberies. But it was not the
ruined wall nor the Gothic well that chained my
footstep and charmed my eye.

It was a solitary human form, seated amidst
the mournful ruins.

The form was so slight, the face so young,
that at the first glance I murmured to myself,
"What a lovely child!" But as my eye lingered
it recognised in the upturned thoughtful brow, in
the sweet serious aspect, in the rounded outlines
of that slender shape, the inexpressible dignity of
virgin woman.

A book was on her lap, at her feet a little
basket, half filled with violets and blossoms culled
from the rock-plants that nestled amidst the
ruins. Behind her, the willow, like an emerald
waterfall, showered down its arching abundant
green, bough after bough, from the tree-top to
the sward, descending in wavy verdure, bright
towards the summit, in the smile of the setting sun,
and darkening into shadow as it neared the earth.

She did not notice, she did not see me; her
eyes were fixed upon the horizon, where it sloped
farthest into space, above the tree-tops and the
ruins; fixed so intently that mechanically I turned
my own gaze to follow the flight of hers. It was as
if she watched for some expected, familiar sign
to grow out from the depths of heaven; perhaps
to greet, before other eyes beheld it, the ray of
the earliest star.

The birds dropped from the boughs on the turf
around her, so fearlessly that one alighted amidst
the flowers in the little basket at her feet. There
is a famous German poem, which I had read in my
youth, called The Maiden from Abroad, variously
supposed to be an allegory of Spring, or of Poetry,
according to the choice of commentators; it seemed
to me as if the poem had been made for her.
Verily, indeed, in her, poet or painter might have
seen an image equally true to either of those
adorners of the earth; both outwardly a delight
to sense, yet both wakening up thoughts within
us, not sad, but akin to sadness.

I heard now a step behind me, and a voice
which I recognised to be that of Mr. Vigors. I
broke from the charm by which I had been so
lingeringly spell-bound, hurried on confusedly,
gained the wicket-gate, from which a short flight
of stairs descended into the common thorough-fare.
And there the every-day life lay again
before me. On the opposite side, houses, shops,
church spires; a few steps more, and the bustling
streets! How immeasurably far from, yet how
familiarly near to, the world in which we move
and have being is that fairy land of romance
which opens out from the hard earth before us,
when Love steals at first to our side, fading
back into the hard earth again as Love smiles or
sighs its farewell!

CHAPTER V.

AND before that evening I had looked on Mr.
Vigors with supreme indifference!—what importance
he now assumed in my eyes! The lady with
whom I had seen him was doubtless the new
tenant of that house in which the young creature
by whom my heart was so strangely moved
evidently had her home. Most probably the relation
between the two ladies was that of mother and
daughter. Mr. Vigors, the friend of one, might
himself be related to both—might prejudice
them against me—might——here, starting up, I
snapped the thread of conjecture, for right before
my eyes, on the table beside which I had seated
myself on entering the room, lay a card of invitation:

                       MRS. POYNTZ.
                            At Home,
                  Wednesday, May 15th.
    Early.

Mrs. Poyntz—Mrs. Colonel Poyntz! the
Queen of the Hill. There, at her house, I could
not fail to learn all about the new comers, who
could never without her sanction have settled on
her domain.

I hastily changed my dress, and, with beating
heart, wound my way up the venerable eminence.

I did not pass through the lane which led
direct to Abbots' House (for that old building
stood solitary amidst its grounds, a little apart
from the spacious platform on which the society
of the Hill was concentred), but up the broad
causeway, with vistaed gas-lamps; the gayer
shops still unclosed, the tide of busy life only
slowly ebbing from the still animated street, on to
a square, in which the four main thoroughfares
of the city converged, and which formed the