The very plants in the drawing-room reminded one of Mrs Stanley, with her dark braided hair, showing no signs of autumn, for all withered leaves were magically kept out of sight.

Millie fancied that a sort of mildewy air came down from the upper rooms, which had long been closed. Nay, the very walls seemed to her imagination emblematical of one in the decline of life. She detected wrinkles in the passages, strange oldfashioned arrangements, and the dim-hued colouring of the rooms below carried out the simile of their grey old age.

There was a rigid formality about Colonel Stanley, oppressive to the undisciplined hearts of youth, as the atmosphere of the hot-house to the mountain wild rose, yet was he using every exertion that morning to adapt himself to Millie's more disorderly ideas of enjoyment.

There was a restlessness in Millie's manner, as if a mist had come over her heart's sunshine, as if a mistrust of that day's pleasure had crept into her thoughts, and was at a loss how to get out again.

She looked anxiously at the door, and in her girlish inexperience wondered that Mr Strafford should absent himself from that day of happiness. Breakfast was nearly over, and the vacant chair at Millie's side seemed like the desolate place on the wall which the green ivy has forgotten to beautify.

With that pertinacity which so often binds the wish to its realization, Millie, in spite of some mis

givings, insisted that Mr Strafford had too much value for this long-established day of cowslips to let it pass by without some notice.

She fancied, and she openly expressed this persuasion, that there were times when her sage lawyer friend would cheerfully exchange dusty folios and yellow parchments to wander amidst the golden cowslips and still brighter laburnums of the old hall. Her girlish discernment went no farther, for with the flowers of the field she never once thought of including her own unfolding loveliness. Common sense rose up against the very shadow of the possibility that a busy, if not a grave professional man should feel interest in the society of an unsophisticated girl just sixteen years of age.

But common sense is not always used in one's calculation of these things, and though Millie knew that Mr Strafford loved to discuss politics with the Colonel, she knew also there were times when, in lighter mood, he could find pleasure, or something that bore a very great resemblance to it, at her side; therefore she set at nought all the Colonel's notions of punctuality, and insisted that her dear friend would make his appearance before the evening.

This was a disorderly infatuation of Millie's, against which the Colonel combated but vainly.

B

CHAPTER V.

EVENING SUNSHINE.

THROUGHOUT the morning, Millie battled bravely against the latent feeling of disappointment, now soothed by the recollection of some gentle precept that Mary, during those work-room communings, had quietly placed on her heart, and which rose up spontaneously even in this time of trivial need, and now soothed by conversing with Mrs Stanley about the happy past of her own short life, going back into those childish days when cowslip-gathering had been the great business of that holiday, when she had sat with Arthur at the pleasant river-side, mischievously dipping her small feet into the silvery stream; going cheerily on to recollections of Mr Strafford, as if the picture were but imperfectly coloured without him; reminding Mrs Stanley how, long, long agofor even months in earliest youth bear the value that one gives to years in after life-she had been rescued by Mr Strafford from a fall into those waters; how he scolded her into trembling repentance for her disobedience, revealing all the while, by his anxious look, the secret he so wished to conceal-that alarm on her account was seeking to hide itself under the garb of irritated feeling.

Then Millie followed Mrs Stanley into the kitchen,

leaving a word and smile of kindness in the hearts of the servants there, which they took out and looked at long after the day of cowslips had passed away.

It had been said, within Millie's recollection, that the Colonel gave way to violent outbreaks of temper. No one knew by whom this was uttered, and none could venture to repeat it, but it was an understood thing that the Colonel was never to be needlessly ruffled,—that if Mrs Stanley looked at Millie, she was not to repeat the inconsiderate observation; and every thing throughout that day went on so smoothly, that in spite of one or two passing frowns, which flitted like storm-birds over the Colonel's broad forehead, and a few stray hints of the benefit of military training, during which his glance was directed towards Millie, there was nothing which really destroyed the happiness of that tranquil morning.

The servants said the old gentleman's cough was less violent on that day than it had been for months, and that the parlour-bell had had a long and unusual respite.

Once during the afternoon, Colonel Stanley gave Millie the key of the book-case—an especial mark of favour. In her haste to liberate the imprisoned volumes, she threw back one of the glass-doors so rudely that she incurred the risk of breaking it. By this inconsiderate action she fairly startled the old man's dormant impetuosity into wakefulness; it pervaded his forehead in a crimson gush, and sent

the spray of some passing angry words from his lips, but this was all; they were scattered by Millie's pleading look for pardon; and though she frightened the precise old volumes by taking them out hastily and turning over their leaves with a rapidity to which they were altogether unaccustomed, he maintained his calmer bearing, and even smiled at her carelessness in putting a musty lexicon in the midst of some eight-volume history of the American war.

Evening had fairly established its claim,-the weary light, for the day's sunshine had been almost unbroken, was sending fantastic shadows through the beech trees, and a flickering gleam played around the flowers, as if luring them to golden sleep.

Sunset was approaching, there was a tinting of deeper colour in the sky, just a presage of those brilliant hues which heaven puts on at eventide to atone for the darkness it is about to shed on the world.

They were sitting round the tea-table, when a sudden knock at the door sent a tingling of delight down into Millie's heart.

As Mr Strafford quietly entered the room, she gave a momentary look of delight at the Colonel, who, in spite of a pre-arranged determination to rebuke his friend for his delay, met him with smiles and kindly welcome.

Mr Strafford had been unwillingly detained by business, and as he said this he looked at Millie, or at the newspaper which she had taken up at that moment.