"Now, I have written you a long letter, to prove how little I need of your compassion or your zeal. Once more let there be long silence between us. It is not easy for me to correspond with a man of your rank, and not incur the curious gossip of my still little pool of a world which the splash of a pebble can break into circles. I must take this over to a post-town some ten miles off, and drop it into the box by stealth. "Adieu, dear and noble friend, gentlest heart and subtlest fancy that I have met in my walk through life. Adieu--write me word when you have abandoned a day-dream and found a Jemima. ALPHONSO. "_P.S._--For heaven's sake, caution and recaution your friend the minister, not to drop a word to this woman that may betray my hiding-place." "Is he really happy?" murmured Harley, as he closed the letter; and he sunk for a few moments into a reverie. "This life in a village--this wife in a lady who puts down her work to talk about villagers--what a contrast to Audley's full existence. And I can never envy nor comprehend either--yet my own--what is it?" He rose, and moved toward the window, from which a rustic stair descended to a green lawn--studded with larger trees than are often found in the grounds of a suburban residence. There were calm and coolness in the sight, and one could scarcely have supposed that London lay so near. The door opened softly, and a lady, past middle age, entered; and, approaching Harley, as he still stood musing by the window, laid her hand on his shoulder. What character there is in a hand! Hers was a hand that Titian would have painted with elaborate care! Thin, white, and delicate--with the blue veins raised from the surface. Yet there was something more than mere patrician elegance in the form and texture. A true physiologist would have said at once, "there are intellect and pride in that hand, which seems to fix a hold where it rests; and, lying so lightly, yet will not be as lightly shaken off." "Harley," said the lady--and Harley turned--"you do not deceive me by that smile," she continued, sadly; "you were not smiling when I entered." "It is rarely that we smile to ourselves, my dear mother; and I have done nothing lately so foolish as to cause me to smile _at_ myself." "My son," said Lady Lansmere, somewhat abruptly, but with great earnestness, "you come from a line of illustrious ancestors; and methinks they ask from their tombs why the last of their race has no aim and no object--no interest--no home in the land which they served, and which rewarded them with its honors." "Mother," said the soldier, simply, "when the land was in danger I served it as my fore-fathers served--and my answer would be the scars on my breast." "Is it only in danger that a country is served--only in war that duty is fulfilled? Do you think that your father, in his plain, manly life of country gentleman, does not fulfill, though obscurely, the objects for which aristocracy is created and wealth is bestowed?"