came to settle the affairs. They were my
poor young mistress's own cousin, Lord
Furnivall, and Mr. Esthwaite, my master's
brother, a shopkeeper in Manchester; not so
well to do then, as he was afterwards, and
with a large family rising about him. Well!
I don't know if it were their settling, or
because of a letter my mistress wrote on her
death-bed to her cousin, my lord; but somehow
it was settled that Miss Rosamond and
me were to go to Furnivall Manor House, in
Northumberland, and my lord spoke as if it had
been her mother's wish that she should live
with his family, and as if he had no objections,
or that one or two more or less could make
no difference in so grand a household. So,
though that was not the way in which I
should have wished the coming of my bright
and pretty pet to have been looked at— who
was like a sunbeam in any family, be it never
so grand— I was well pleased that all the folks
in the Dale should stare and admire, when
they heard I was going to be young lady's maid
at my Lord Furnivall's at Furnivall Manor.

But I made a mistake in thinking we were
to go and live where my lord did. It turned
out that the family had left Furnivall Manor
House fifty years or more. I could not
hear that my poor young mistress had ever
been there, though she had been brought up
in the family; and I was sorry for that, for
I should have liked Miss Rosamond's youth
to have passed 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 Rosa-
mond very well for a few years, and that her
being there might perhaps amuse his old
aunt.

I was bidden by rny lord to have Miss
Rosamond's things ready by a certain day.
He was a stern, proud man, as they say all
the Lord Furnivalls 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 had 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 the place;— to lop the
wood, or to keep the moss-covered carriageway
in order. Only in front of the house all
was clear. The great oval drive was without
a weed; and neither tree nor creeper was
allowed to grow over the long, many-windowed
front; at both sides of which a wing projected,
which were each the ends of other side fronts;
for the house, although it was so desolate,
was even grander than I expected. Behind
it rose the Fells, which seemed unenclosed
and bare enough; and on the left hand of the
house as you stood facing it, was a little old-
fashioned flower-garden, as I found out
afterwards. A door opened out upon it from the
west front; it had been scooped out of the
thick dark wood for some old Lady Furnivall;
but the branches of the great forest
trees had grown and overshadowed it again,
and there were very few flowers that would
live there at that time.

When we drove up to the great front
entrance, and went into the hall I thought
we should be lost— it was so large, and vast,
and grand. There was a chandelier all of
bronze, hung down from the middle of the
ceiling; and I had never seen one before, and
looked at it all in amaze. Then, at one end of
the hall, was a great fire-place, as large as the
sides of the houses in my country, with massy
andirons and dogs to hold the wood; and
by it were heavy old-fashioned sofas. At the
opposite end of the hall, to the left as you
went in— on the western side— was an organ
built into the wall, and so large that it filled
up the best part of that end. Beyond it, on
the same side, was a door; and opposite, on
each side of the fire-place, were also doors
leading to the east front; but those I never
went through as long as I stayed in the house,
so I can't tell you what lay beyond.

The afternoon was closing in, and the hall,
which had no fire lighted in it, looked dark and