"What can be the matter with the boy?" thought Miss Sibylla Smith, and all the maidens young, old, and middle aged. "Has he fallen in love with his tutor's daughter, or got engaged to his guardian's niece?" for our young people had studied life so zealously in three-volume novels, that they never doubted for a moment that Frank Edwards's tutor (if he had a tutor) had a daughter, or that his guardian (and they knew he had a guardian) had a niece. But in spite of all our thoughts Bandvale Hall continued empty. "I'll take another look at the old place," I said, one day in August as I was passing the lodge, and rode at a quiet contemplative walk down the avenue. I hung my rein over one of the rails of the porch steps, and passed round into the garden. Not a flower to be seen; but the place of them famously supplied with potatoes and other useful articles--and the same evidence of absenteeism in the shape of tottering walls, and grass grown walks, and dusty fountains in all directions. What a shame!--if I knew the boy's address, I would write to him to come home at once; but that Leicestershire guardian has kept him quite separated from those who ought to have been his friends, and had the bringing up of him from his youth. If we are to have him all the rest of his life, he could not have come among us too early; and in the firm intention of carrying this resolution into effect, I determined to look out for some workman about the place, to ask where Mr Edwards was to be found. The man that has the care of the garden can't be far off;--and accordingly I went in search of him. But either the vegetables were illustrations, like Southey's butlers, of self-culture, or the gardener had gone to dinner; and in the expectation of finding him in the kitchen, I clambered into the house by an open window, and walked quietly along the passage. I thought I heard voices in the garden library, a delightful room on the ground-floor, where I had passed many an evening with old Frank; and, supposing the gardener had taken possession of it, I opened the door. Close to the window two persons were sitting, so deeply engaged in conversation that they did not remark my entrance, and I took the opportunity of observing them at leisure. They were both young men--both tall and good-looking; one remarkably dark, with great umbrageous whiskers and mustaches; the other a chestnut-haired, fresh-complexioned youth, so like poor old Frank in the set on of his head and breadth of his shoulders, that I knew in a moment it could be no one but his son. They seemed both very much excited about something; but from the whispered tone of their conversation, it was difficult to make out what it was. The dark man, who was six or seven years older than his companion, had apparently been saying something that shocked the other, for he clenched his hand, and threw his eyes despairingly to the ceiling; and no wonder, for the words