More especially at the juncture when you, reader, are invited to walk across the lawn, sloping away from the drawing-room windows to the Hollow—for Heather had then been absent from home for nearly a fortnight, staying with Mrs. Marsden, whose health was anything but satisfactory—and during the whole of that time the house had been, in Arthur’s opinion, at sixes and sevens, and Mr. Dudley’s personal comforts somewhat neglected. All of which formed a text from which Bessie preached a sermon—always beginning, never-ending—on the difference of Berrie Down with and without a mistress. “I never believed the woman lived who could make me agree with Solomon, till I met your wife, Arthur,” she said. “What do you mean?” he asked. “That I am certain now of the truth of that which he never could have known from his own experience, that a woman may be to her husband, ‘Far Above Rubies.’” “Humph!” ejaculated Squire Dudley; and he went out, disgusted with Bessie, the wisest of men, and the world in general. CHAPTER IV. HEATHER. Let me place the picture of Berrie Down before you once again, before proceeding with my story. In the stillness of the summer evening, look upon Arthur Dudley’s home, as the few passers-by pause occasionally to gaze, so that you may stamp the stage and its accessories on your memory ere the characters I would group together come prominently forward, and commence acting the unexciting story it is proposed to tell. There is the house, with its many windows festooned by westeria and clematis, roses and magnolia; the house, with its red-tiled roof, with its grotesque chimneys, with its cheerful drawing-room, with its sunny bedchambers. There is the lawn, smooth shaven and green, on which the sunlight falls in broad, golden patches, sloping down sharply to the Hollow, where the blackberry bushes, and the broom, and the low underwood, form a mass of tangled wildness. Beyond there is the stream, and a little to the left Mr. Scrotter’s modest flour-mill; then come fields, where cows are lying and sheep browsing, and away in the distance stands Mr. Raidsford’s mansion, with trees about it—trees that are merged in, and seem to form a part of, the woods and plantations surrounding Kemms’ Park.