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seclusion and dejection; but as Sylvester did not, he thought no more about the matter.

"There's a lovely girl!" he exclaimed, as a carriage passed them about half a mile from the Hall. "Did you see her?"

"I took no particular notice, my dear, I was looking at the carriage."

"Oh, you should have seen her one of the most beautiful creatures ever beheld!"

"Young, my dear—very young?"

"She seemed to be very young. An older person—her mother, I imagine—was in the carriage with her."

This at once banished the thought she had conceived of its being Howard's daughter. She had no mother to ride by her side: of every comfort—of every joy which a mother could impart she had been most unhappily deprived.

"I wonder," said Sylvester, "whom she can be. Do you know the carriage?"

"I thought as it passed that I'd seen it before. But it cannot be the one I imagined.

"I should much like to know who she is."

"Why, my love—why?"

"Oh, I don't know. Perhaps because she is the most charming girl I ever saw."

The subject then dropped, and as Sylvester's thoughts were fixed on her, while those of his aunt were engaged with Howard, they returned, almost in silence, to the Grange.

At ten minutes past three precisely—the usual twenty minutes before the appointed time—the reverend gentleman drove up to the gate; and, having alighted, felt anxious to be off; but Sylvester, knowing this propensity of his, had him in and expostulated with him, and pointed out to him the monstrous absurdity of supposing that his horse couldn't do more than four miles an hour.

"Did you ever see a carriage," he inquired at length; "an olive carriage, picked out with white?"

"I have seen such a carriage," replied the reverend gentleman, colouring up on the instant; "I certainly have seen such a carriage!"

"And so have I! and of all the lovely creatures I ever beheld, she, who was in that carriage this morning, was incomparably the most lovely!"

"What!" exclaimed the reverend gentleman, who didn't on this point wish to be urged. "What!" he reiterated, pointing to a portrait for which Aunt Eleanor had sat twenty years before. "Have you ever seen that portrait?"

"Of course I have; and see it now."

"Did you ever see the original?"

Aunt Eleanor smiled, and playfully patted the cheek of the reverend gentleman and blushed, and said that she thought it was much too bad.

"Well, but do you know to whom that carriage belongs?" inquired Sylvester.

"Was this young lady alone?"