‘But why should she leave when his lordship got married? He’ll want a housekeeper just the same. And likely would have raised Nell’s wages. It was the very time for her to stay on.’ ‘Ah, well, father, she longed to see us all again. You heard the dear lass say so, and you’d be the last to blame her for that, I’m sure.’ ‘Of course,’ replied her husband, ‘no one is better pleased to have the girl back than I am, but I wish it had been all straight and above board, and with no mystery about it. For I’d lay my life you haven’t got at the bottom of it yet, wife, nor ever will if the jade don’t mean you to. You don’t know the tricks they learns them up in London. Well, now she’s come back, she stays. I won’t have no more London, and no more mysteries. She’s welcome back as the flowers in May, but I wish she’d told the whole truth about it.’ CHAPTER IX. Nell slept only by snatches through that night, and waked the next morning with a heart of lead in her bosom. She had been so long unused to country sights and sounds, that she opened her eyes with the first gleam of sunshine that streamed through her window. The air was so pure, and the surroundings so peaceful, that she could hear the gardeners whetting their scythes in Sir Archibald Bowmant’s grounds, and the milkers whistling, or talking to each other, as they took their way to the cowsheds. A lark was executing his wonderful, untaught trills far up somewhere in the blue heavens, and the farmyard chorus had commenced to tune up--hens clucking, ducks quacking, pigs grunting, and cows lowing, as they asked to be delivered of their burden of milk. The honeysuckle and roses, which clambered outside her window and tapped against the panes, were filling the morning air with their fragrance; the dew-laden grass sent forth a sweet, faint odour; the smell of ripening fruit and ripened vegetables permeated the air. These were the things of which Nell had dreamed in her town life with intense longing; which she had sickened to see and hear again; the re-enjoyment of which, she had believed would prove the panacea for every pain, the cure for every trouble. And now they were all before her in their fullest beauty, and she turned her face from them and hid it on her pillows. The innocent sights and sounds made her tremble and turn faint with despair. They were no longer for her; she had outgrown them. The simple tastes of her childhood mocked her as she lay there--a deceiver, a pretender, an acting lie in her father’s household. Nell had kept back the truth for years, but she had never perverted it before--stooped to falsehoods to hide her shame, deceived her father and her mother, and come back to take her place amongst them as a pure woman, when she knew herself to be no longer pure. The very things which she had believed would be her balm had proved her bane. The very daisies and buttercups rose up in judgment against her,