if they were really as lovely as he described
them. Sir Edward Stamford, the owner of
Lichendale Hall, and who would have been
the great man of our neighbourhood had he
ever visited it, was one of the acquaintances
of whom we heard most. My father regretted
this much; for reports had travelled home
that the life Sir Edward led abroad was wild
and dissipated; and those who recollected
him at Lichendale, in the old Baronet's time,
declared that he had been always self-willed
and passionate.

Lawrence had been absent six years. I was
grown into a tall, shy girl of sixteen; and
Paul, after a successful career at Cambridge,
was on the eve of being ordained. Surely,
Lawrence would soon come back, I thought.
My father also longed for his return, and
wrote to urge him to leave Rome, at least for
a while. We were full of glad expectation.
My father counted the weeks that would
elapse before his return, and I counted the
days and hours, which I thought would never
pass.

Before that day came a more terrible—a
more suddenly terrible one. A letter came
for my father from Italy, but not directed
in Lawrence's hand. I took it into my father's
study myself, and watched him as he read
it. He seemed to dread evil. He broke the
seal slowly, and paused before he dared to
glance at the contents. I was so frightened
and impatient that I could have torn it open,
had it been bound with iron, and my father's
delay was dreadful to me. One look at his face,
as he stared in horror at the short, Italian
sentence, confirmed my worst fears, and I did
not need to hear the word  "Dead! "  rise
slowly to his lips, to strike the awful
certainty through me, that Lawrence—
affectionate, wilful Lawrence—would never come
back to us. I did not scream or faint. I
felt the longing that I have had from childhood,
whenever I have been unhappy or
terror-stricken, to creep away with my grief
and hide; but I could not leave my father,
pale and ghastly as he looked. Thank God!
I did not. For years he had had symptoms
of heart-disease. I clung to him in silence,
thinking that it was only his great mental
pain that made him so deadly still and
white. I chafed and kissed his hands; and,
in grief for his grief, almost forgot my
own.  "Paul—send for him!"  he sighed.
I left the room, wrote a short note to summon
him, and then hastened back to the
study, for I began to fear my father was
ill.

In those few minutes Death had entered,
and claimed his victim. What a night of
misery I passed!  I longed to die. Why
was I spared?—spared to pain and mourning
and craving grief?

CHAPTER THE SECOND.

NEARLY two years passed, and I still
lived at the dear old rectory. Sir Edward
Stamford, the patron of the living of Lichendale,
had written to offer it to Paul when he
heard of my father's death. The letter was
kind, and full of polite regrets that they
should most probably never meet, as he
intended to remain always abroad. There
was no mention of Lawrence in it; which I
thought strange.  My brother hesitated
for some time before accepting a living
from one whom he chose to call a sinner
in the sight of the Lord; but his affection
for Lichendale; for its grand, old parish
church, and the sober, godly towns-people,
overcame these scruples, and he settled
down into my father's place, if not to fulfil
its duties as mildly, at any rate with as
rigid conscientiousness and self-denial.
Hannah had left us, to live with some orphan
nieces of hers in another town; so I was
Paul's little housekeeper, as I had latterly
been my father's. There were none of the
few families of our own rank in Lichendale
that I much liked, or with whom I kept up
any great intimacy, so that I often felt sadly
lonely. Paul loved me in his grave way,
but he seemed to think that any unnecessary
display of affection was harmful, and I cannot
remember his ever petting or caressing
me. Still, after the first great grief for
Lawrie and my father had been softened by
time, I was happy—in a sort of quiet, listless
way. The country round Lichendale was
beautiful. On one side, was the park, with
the Hall peering through the trees; and, on
the other, the red sands which the tide
rarely covered, stretching away to the silver
sea-line. I used to take long walks by
myself on these sands, or in the woods. I
did not read much; for the only books that
Paul allowed me were what I did not care
for; either abstruse treatises on religion, or
biographies, in which the history of the
man was made subservient to all manner of
doleful morals, and melancholy hints to
sinners. We lived very simply. Lawrence
had left many debts in Rome; and, to pay
these, it was necessary for a few years to give
up many luxuries, and to part with one of
our trusty old servants. So I found some
pleasant occupation in little household
duties.

This was my life when I was eighteen;
and it was then that Sir Edward Stamford
suddenly returned to Lichendale. He was
brought by the report of an approaching
dissolution of Parliament, people said; for, they
whispered, he meant to stand for Lichendale,
to turn out the present sleepy old member.
Lichendale is one of the smallest borough-towns
in England; but, at the passing of the
Reform Bill, everybody thought it likely to
become a populous seaport. There were
rumours of docks to be built, and new lines of
traffic to be opened; and the old inhabitants,
terrified at the prospect of these changes,
swore vengeance against the different
companies that were to effect them; but, as time