until she felt herself unworthy even to pluck the flowers of the field. These thoughts so depressed her, that she rose in a melancholy mood, that quite precluded her keeping up the farce of gaiety which she had played the night before. She appeared at the breakfast-table so pale and heavy-eyed and languid, that her father gazed at her with surprise, and her mother, in pity for her looks, tried to divert her husband’s attention from them as much as possible by talking of Hetty and their acquaintances in Usk. The conversation came round in time to their landlord, Sir Archibald Bowmant. ‘Are the family at home, mother?’ asked Nell. ‘I could hear the men mowing the lawn distinctly from my window this morning, and I fancied I could smell the scent from those huge mounds of heliotrope they used to have in front of the dining-room windows. I have never seen heliotrope grow in such profusion anywhere else.’ ‘No, my girl, there’s nobody there, nor likely to be till the summer is well over. Sir Archibald is our landlord, and a liberal one, so we’ve no call to say anything against him, and perhaps it’s no business of ours, but he is a very different gentleman since he married again. The first Lady Bowmant was a good woman, and though I suppose Sir Archibald was always inclined to be wild, she kept him straight as you may say. But since his second marriage, well, Usk Hall is not the same place.’ ‘How is it altered?’ said Nell, trying to take a languid interest in her mother’s conversation. ‘Oh, in everything, my dear. In _my_ lady’s time (I always call her _my_ lady, you know, Nell, on account of my having been her maid before her marriage) the family used to go to church regularly every Sunday; he and she in their carriage, and as many servants as could be spared following them up the aisle. But now their pew’s empty from week’s end to week’s end. Of course, if the master and mistress don’t attend church, the servants can’t be expected to do so. And I doubt if they’d have the time, for they seem to be kept working more on Sundays than on any other day in the week.’ ‘How is that, mother?’