respectability, was on the steps to receive them. This, Olivia knew, must be Sanders, an old servant of Sir Warwick's, of whom she had already heard. Though pensioned off, and having a cottage in the village, he had been loth to leave the house where he had lived for forty years, and had condescended to remain as major-domo in Mr. Pomfret's service, for the present. Of course he looked on the new people' with a certain contempt; how should it be otherwise? But he did his duty by them, as an honest servant. It wasn't their fault that they were not of the old stock. Olivia felt sure, at once, that Sanders and she would become friends. They went into a great oak paneled hall, with a vaulted roof; and all the interior of the house was of a like character; grand, and ancestral-looking, and just a thought gloomy. At least, Olivia felt that it would depend on how it was lived in, whether it were so or the reverse: there was no inherent gaiety in the long dimly lit corridors, and vast suites of rooms; she pictured to herself the last wretched Lady Milton, living in her miserable and vicious solitude here: she could not wonder at Sir Warwick's dread of returning to that most depressing old house, burthened, as it was, with terrible associations for him. Nothing but the sunlight of a happy family party could make it a cheerful home. She did not rest till she had been through the chief rooms, examining, with especial curiosity, the pictures on the walls, as she went along; lifting her candle so as to catch a gleam of light on the cuirasses, and brocades, and powdered heads of deceased Eyres and Miltons. Mary was too tired, and too indifferent to the subject of the abbey and its ancestry, to accompany her friend: she lay coiled up, in the library, with a novel in her hand, but I doubt if she was really reading. Mr. Pomfret was immersed in papers, at a distant table. It was then that Olivia, taking up one of the heavy silver candlesticks, opened the door of the yellow drawing-room, and began her explorations. Here Sanders, on his evening round of survey through the apartments, surprised her. Rightly conjecturing that the young lady was possessed of a laudable desire to be better instructed touching the greatness and the virtues of the puissant house of Milton, he vouchsafed to expound the portraits, at which he found her intently gazing. In the last room of all there was a comely lady in a murrey-coloured velvet, with no waist to speak of, and beautiful arms, holding by the hand a little boy, as she walked in a garden (represented by dabs of brown and yellow paint, with an occasional spot of vermillion), beyond which an object might be detected, bearing some remote resemblance to the ruined abbey-window. But it was on the boy that Olivia's eyes were riveted. Could the grave, almost stern-looking man, whose face she knew so well, have ever been the original of this bright rosy-cheeked child? It was hard to believe; but Sanders told her it was so, and then she detected, in the merry brown eyes, some faint foreshadow of an expression which she had seen in Warwick Milton, at moments. On the other wall, hung two more full-lengths. These, so Sanders said, represented Sir Warwick, grown to man's estate, and the late Lady Milton. They had been painted soon after their marriage, by the great Ringner, some eighteen years ago, I suppose. Allowing for any amount of flattery on the artist's part, Sir Warwick must have been a very handsome young man at that time. And yet, how infinitely Olivia preferred the worn deep-souled face she knew, with its thoughtful brow, from which the hair had receded, and on which care had furrowed two deep lines, to the white polished temples and hyperion locks, the flashing eyes, and flesh-and-blood beauty, of this youth of two and twenty. He looked here full of joy, and hopeful promise, and-unless the artist had maligned him—just a tinge of pardonable dandyism, in the arrangement of the hands, and the careful carelessness of every detail in his dress. How much had the man's whole character changed, since such a delineation of him had been possible! Olivia turned to the other picture with intense curiosity, and stood before it for some time. It represented a young woman in a glitter of satin and lace, winding a string of pearls round an impossible arm, with fingers so taper and fragile, that they seemed liable to snap off under the weight of the beads. There was nothing to be made of the face; whatever individuality it had possessed in life had been smoothed and beautified out of it in transmission to the canvas. The mouth was about half the size of the eyes; the complexion was a fine compound of rose leaves and chalk, utterly unlike the flesh of any healthy girl, with warm blood flowing in her veins, unless indeed in the beplastered condition of a ballet-girl's. There were great coils and curls of golden hair, (which recalled Clara's, and might account for Sir Warwick's repugnance to her blonde beauty?) and a throat and bust which, though anatomically absurd, represented what, in real life, no doubt was of very perfect form. Sanders seemed impatient at Olivia's remaining so long before this portrait. He walked away to emphasise his impatience. There was nothing that redounded to the credit of the house to be said of the original,-why she had not even given unto it an heir! Therefore Sanders was silent; he was not one to gossip with a stranger about Sir Warwick's deceased wife. 'Lady Milton must have been very beautiful?' Her ladyship was reckoned a handsome woman, miss.' 'I know Sir Warwick very well, Sanders,' Olivia said after a pause, during which she had determined to make this avowal. He has been my best friend. I know all his history, and I feel the deepest interest in everything that concerns him. When did you hear from him last ?' 'Near upon three months since; he was at Naples then, miss. I haven't heard since. I'm in hopes he may come home for a bit this summer.' 'You mean come to England ? He can't come here?' 'He has kep' the dower-house you know, miss-that is, the old Milton Manor as was, better than three miles away, just on the skirts of the park; he hasn't let that along with the rest just because he might come for a bit, now and then, and being a small house, where he never lived with her ladyship, you understand, he don't mind it, like this, where he can't abide to stay a night: and so he let it.' The old servant sighed. 'I wonder what any of the fam'ly would say if they could come down from the wall and speak, to see the old place let to strangers!' 'Why, there's no disgrace in that; and it is better than letting it be shut up, and grow damp. You will find Mr. Pomfret a very good tenant, and a very good master too, Sanders.' who has been better than forty year in the fam❜ly.' Having relieved his mind by this justification of his present position, Sanders was less loath to discourse of other matters. 'You lived here all the time that Sir Warwick was away, I suppose? I mean when Lady Milton was alone.' 'Yes; and dreary times those were!' He shook his head, and drew in his lips, as though the talking of it put his teeth on edge. Very dreary times, miss. He left me in a responsible position, you see. I durstn't go away for an hour; and no one ever came near the place, except it was her ladyship's father, Mr. Finchley, as used to be the surgeon in the village, till they was obliged to supervene him. It was his bad example as made Well, well! she's gone to her last account, and him too. He was took this spring; a merciful riddance, I'm sure. It wasn't much good to 'im, after all, his daughter being rose to be " my lady." She hadn't even a child, so as he could call his grandson heir to the property. And now my master 'll never marry again, I suppose; more's the pity! His second cousin's child 'll step into it all, miss, whom he doesn't even know. Well, well!' 'Sir Warwick avoids all ladies' society here, I suppose,' said Olivia, after a moment's pause. She wanted to encourage the old servant to go on talking of his master. 'Yes, miss, that's it-that's just it. There be plenty of nice young ladies, among the county fam'lies, but he won't so much as look at any of 'em-scarcely so much as knows them. There's some think that he's made a vow, never to marry a lady who knows that he is rich, with a title, and a grand property. I don't know how that may be, miss, but any ways, he aint likely to go and marry beneath him again; and going about calling himself Mr. Thompson, like he does, without a valet, or anything, it stands to reason, no lady of family is likely to take up with him. No, I'm afraid he won't marry again, miss, and more's the pity.' Here Mary's voice was heard calling Olivia, in the far distance. It was past eleven o'clock, and Mr. Pomfret was going to bed. It had been a very fatiguing day for them all, and how Olivia could go wandering through the rooms at that hour passed poor Mary's comprehension. Mr. Sanders, as was natural, conceived but a poor opinion of Miss Pomfret. 'I dare say she's a good young lady enough,' he observed to the land-steward, the next morning, when the Pomfret family was under discussion, but she aint my style. Too weak and puling, and I can't abide light hair, after the specimen we had of it here. No, I like a fine woman. Now that Miss -what's her name ?--Marston, is something like. She is a grand young lady. What a carriage she has, and such eyes! And then she's got some intelligence to talk, and ask about things; but the other hasn't got a word to say, but looks as white and limp as a washed handkerchief, without starch.' CHAPTER L. COMING TO THE POINT. In the little first-floor drawingroom in Sloane Street, Clara sat alone, about six o'clock one evening in this week. At half-past seven she was to dine at the bishop's,her bishop's, as she called him-in Bryanstone Square; but she need not begin to dress for another halfhour yet. Nearly every minute in her busy day had its own active work; this was the only hour she could sit down and think, and even this was liable to the interruption of visitors. Mr. Cornwallis Methuen Whenever she set herself to think, being an eminently practical little person, it was to some purpose; on things present, or to come, seldom on the past. She had the happy faculty of letting most by-gones be very completely by-gones. One topic, one person, only, she never had succeeded in effacing from her memory, as she desired. It was a pity, for the recollection disturbed the perfect working of a machinery which would otherwise have been complete and without a flaw. Yet, on reflection, perhaps I am wrong, and there was an inherent flaw in the metal. It was apparently the best cast iron; the soft, unsound spot was that unexpected little vein of a heart, which put out all the calculations of those who thought they read the actress through and through. I have called it unexpected, for it cropped out at times when it was least looked for; that it did not run very deep we, who have watched her after one great crisis in her life, can tell. Not enough of a heart to make her a devoted, miserable woman; not enough to prevent her thirsting for other men's admiration, and using every art to obtain it; yet enough to make her return, again and again, to the thought of a man who no longer cared for her, and against whom she had every right to feel the deepest resentment. He had treated her heartlessly; she ought to feel the greatest contempt for him; she acted as though she did so. Yet she thought of him more than she did of any one else. Every day she found herself drawing mental comparisons between him and other men; with Rupert, for instance. In Clara's eyes, the comparison was fatal to the latter. He was a brave, honourable man; had a noble, unselfish nature; would never have acted as Julian had done; but he lacked that aristocratic beauty and bearing, that indefinable charm, dashed with superciliousness, which were so eminently attractive to Clara. Beside Julian, Rupert looked clumsy and thick-set, and all the moral qualities in the world could not make weight against the physical charms of height, and strength, and an admirably proportioned figure. Hers was essentially a nature to be influenced thus; Westbrook was the only man she had ever cared for, and when she remembered the time that he was at her feet, when she thought that had she then resisted his passion she might now possibly be his wife, her heart was full of bitterness. She would have been a faithful wife to him; she could have made great sacrifices for him; and I believe if that task could have been pointed out to her, by the accomplishment of which she might have won back his love, she would have journeyed to the world's end to achieve it. She had gloried in her triumphs lately, when she and Julian had met; it had been sweet to her to show that others could appreciate her, if he could not; to parade before him her intimacy with that woman to whom her sharp eyes at once saw that he had transferred his allegiance. She acted the part of oblivion and indifference like an accomplished actress, as she was; and if she did not altogether succeed in imposing upon Westbrook, it was rather that he believed in her deadly animosity, than that he suspected her of the folly of any lingering fondness for himself. He was profoundly incredulous as to her capacity of caring for anything in heaven or earth, except her own little self. It had been a case of 'diamond cut diamond,' and all was at an end long ago between them. Her crossing his path at this juncture was a great bore; it might even seriously interfere with his prospects. He was, therefore, most anxious to discredit her in Olivia's eyes, by proving to the latter what an intriguante Clara was. It was on this account that he had found a peculiar and malicious pleasure in man; pointing out the toils which Clara was evidently spreading for Rupert. Each time they met he watched Marston's entanglement becoming more and more hopeless, and he smiled. He knew quite well that she cared nothing about the young it all tended to confirm his convictions touching her, and, inasmuch as he saw that Olivia's suspicions against her quondam friend were roused, Julian was well pleased. Certainly this was not the result Clara desired to bring about; so far she had failed. And she knew it, yet she had not quite lost all hope. It might be yet possible to arouse his vanity and excite his jealous love of success, by the knowledge of other men's devotion. So she thought; but yet, she was far too practical to allow a chimera to stand between her and the prospect of worldly advancement, ease, and comfort. A marriage with Rupert Marston in his present circumstances would, perhaps, scarcely seem to present this prospect; but he was a rising man, was sure to be a rich one some day; in Clara's position, such a marriage was not to be despised. And among the motives which actuated her in encouraging Rupert may perhaps have been the feminine triumph of winning Olivia's brother, in spite of the warnings which (Clara's unerring instinct detected) were employed against her. She had been anxious, however, not to alarm Olivia, if possible, and, before her, had always treated Rupert's admiration as a matter of course-a species of homage to which she was too much used to treat it as of any special importance. She talked quite openly, as we have seen, of his visits; referred playfully to his absence at a concert where she expected him; was careful that there should seem to be nothing like concealment on her part; in short, that Olivia should understand it was a harmless flirtation of her brother's, which |