The two of them walked up and down the long carriage-drive, between the tall rows of bleak trees; and as the old man garrulously gossiped about the past times, and his more or less confused memories, it seemed to Annie Brunel as though the whole scene around her were unreal. The narrowing avenue of trees, the heaped-up snow, the broad shafts of sunlight falling across the path, the glimpses of the white meadows, and the blue stream, and the wintry sunshine hitting on the vane of the village church, were all so very like a theatrical "set;" while the man beside her, whom she had never seen before, seemed to be some strange link connecting her with a forgotten and inscrutable past. The assurance that he would not be "turned off to follow the rest" had softened old Brooks’s usually querulous and pugnacious manner; and in his most genial fashion he recalled and recounted whatever stories he could remember of Annie Brunel’s old childhood, and of her mother’s happy life on the margin of that Swiss lake. He actually gossiped his companion into cheerfulness. Forgetting all about Mr. Cayley, she went with Brooks down to the lodge; and there the old man, intensely proud of the familiarity he had already established between himself and her, presented to her, with calm airs of superiority, his overawed son and daughter-in-law. And the new mistress made herself quite at home; and had two of the children on her knee at once; and was interested in Tom’s pet blackbird; and expressed her admiration of Jack’s string of blown eggs; and finally invited all the young ones to tea, in the housekeeper’s room, that evening at six punctually. Another visitor was expected that evening. Much as Annie Brunel desired to play the part of a secret and invisible benefactor to all her friends, she found that this would cut off from her any chance of companionship; and so, before going down into Berks, she had told the story of her altered fortunes to Nelly Featherstone, and begged of that young person to come down and stay with her for a time. Nelly burst into tears of joy; was profoundly conscious of the benefit of having so desirably rich a friend; was honestly delighted and prudently speculative at the same moment, and accepted the invitation. Nelly was a girl of spirit. She knew she would be inspected by critical servants, and perhaps by visitors of exalted rank, and she resolved not to shame her old friend. She accurately sketched beforehand the character she would assume; fixed her demeanour; decided the tone she would adopt in speaking to Lady Annie Knottingley; and, finally, bought the current number of _Punch_, and dressed her hair and herself in imitation of one of the ladies of that periodical.