The lovers parted, and Christopher went home like one who has awakened from a hideous dream to daylight and happiness. He had not gone far before he met a dashing dogcart, driven by an exquisite. He turned to look after it, and saw it drive up to Kent Villa. In a moment he divined his rival, and a sickness of heart came over him. But he recovered himself directly, and said, “If that is the fellow, she will not receive him now.” She did receive him though: at all events, the dogcart stood at the door, and its master remained inside. Christopher stood, and counted the minutes: five, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, and still the dogcart stood there. It was more than he could bear. He turned savagely, and strode back to Gravesend, resolving that all this torture should end that night, one way or other. Phoebe Dale was the daughter of a farmer in Essex, and one of the happiest young women in England till she knew Reginald Falcon, Esq. She was reared on wholesome food, in wholesome air, and used to churn butter, make bread, cook a bit now and then, cut out and sew all her own dresses, get up her own linen, make hay, ride anything on four legs; and, for all that, was a great reader, and taught in the Sunday school to oblige the vicar; wrote a neat hand, and was a good arithmetician, kept all the house accounts and farm accounts. She was a musician, too,--not profound, but very correct. She would take her turn at the harmonium in church, and, when she was there, you never heard a wrong note in the bass, nor an inappropriate flourish, nor bad time. She could sing, too, but never would, except her part in a psalm. Her voice was a deep contralto, and she chose to be ashamed of this heavenly organ, because a pack of envious girls had giggled, and said it was like a man's. In short, her natural ability and the range and variety of her useful accomplishments were considerable; not that she was a prodigy; but she belonged to a small class of women in this island who are not too high to use their arms, nor too low to cultivate their minds; and, having a faculty and a habit deplorably rare amongst her sex, viz., Attention, she had profited by her miscellaneous advantages.