There was no thoroughfare through this street, which ended in a mews, so it was indeed very quiet and very dull. From her sitting-room window Florence had listlessly watched the opposite neighbors till she knew them all and was familiar with their habits--the half-pay major and his shrewish wife; the invalid lady with her large family of boisterous children, and the three old maids who were patterns of propriety and stiffness to every one in the street. But her eye always rested longest on two young females, daily governesses, who with commendable punctuality went to and fro every day. How she envied them--how she longed to take up her books, too, and toil with the proud satisfaction of knowing that her meed would be the glittering coins of which she so often felt an absolute need. But Mr. Heriton was prouder than in the days of his prosperity. He was always dreaming of retrieving the past by some stroke of good luck, and he insisted that his heiress should do nothing that would degrade him. A hint that she was anxious to make some use of her accomplishments threw him into such a fit of passion that his frightened daughter never dared repeat it. But it was a weary life for one so young. Without a piano--a luxury she had long ago been forced to deny herself--without books, save those she had read till she wearied of them--forbidden to walk out because it was indecorous for Miss Heriton to be seen without an attendant--the days went by as slowly and sadly as Mariana’s in the moated grange. Mr. Heriton--dressed with punctilious care--always sallied forth after he had breakfasted, and did not return until evening, when Florence was expected to be ready to receive him with smiles. He never asked how she had spent the long interval; nor did he seem to guess how often it was passed in weeping over the pages of her one great treasure--a little journal her mother had kept, and which she jealously guarded from every eye, for was not the last entry about Frank Dormer?--that dear, kind, gentle Frank, more thought of, more loved and regretted now than even in the first days of his absence. Mrs. Heriton’s feeble hand had traced these words only a few hours before she died: “Thursday, May, 18--.--Mr. Dormer left us yesterday for India. Even as I imagined, he loves my darling, and hopes to return some day rich enough to wed her. Heaven bless and prosper him! For he is a good young man, and it comforts and strengthens me to think that there is some one in this wide world who will protect her when I am gone. Perhaps I am too romantic in hoping this, but so pure a love will surely outlast the sad changes which I am compelled to dread. My poor Richard--my poor little Florence!”