go on with this in order to confound her stepmother’s suspicions, and prove that she was neither discouraged nor rendered unhappy by what had happened. Naturally, in her inexperience, Anne gave great importance to this feat of baffling her stepmother’s observation, and looking ‘just as usual;’ and naturally, also, she failed altogether in the attempt. Mrs. Mountford was an experienced woman. She knew what it meant when a girl looked too much as if nothing had happened. And she watched with great vigilance, partly by simple instinct, partly with a slight sense of gratification, that the elder daughter, who was so much more important than her own child, should feel that she was mortal. It was not any active malevolence that was in Mrs. Mountford’s mind. She would have been horrified had it been suggested to her that she wished Anne any harm. She wished her no harm; but only that she might feel after all that life was not one triumph and scene of unruffled success and blessedness--which is the best moral discipline for everybody, as is well known. CHAPTER III. THE ‘GAME.’ The name of the parish in which Mount was the principal house was Moniton, by some supposed to be a corruption of Mount-ton, the village being situated on the side of a circular hill looking more like a military mound than a natural object, which gave the name alike to the property and the district. Mount Hill, as it was called with unnecessary amplification, was just outside the park gates, and at its foot lay the Rectory, the nearest neighbouring house with which the Mountfords could exchange civilities. When one comes to think of it, the very existence of such ecclesiastical houses close by the mansions of the English gentry and nobility is a standing menace and danger to that nobler and more elevated class--now that the family living is no longer a natural provision for a younger son. The greatest grandee in the land has to receive the clergyman’s family as equals, whatever may be his private opinion on the subject; they are ladies and gentlemen, however poor they may be, or little eligible to be introduced into closer connection with members of the aristocracy, titled or otherwise; and, as a matter of fact, they have to be so received, whence great trouble sometimes arises, as everybody knows. The young people at the Hall and the parsonage grow up together, they meet continually, and join in all each other’s amusements, and if they determine to spend their lives together afterwards, notwithstanding all those social differences which are politely ignored in society, until the moment comes when they must be brought into prominence, who can wonder at it? The wonder is that on the whole so little harm occurs. The young Ashleys were the nearest neighbours of the Mountford girls. They called each other by their Christian names; they furnished each other with most of their amusements. Had the boys not been ready to their call for any scheme of