for the Gubbinses and Lawsons, but it was a great godsend to the parish. And when Lady Meadowlands’ mother, old Lady Prayrey Poule, went and married, actually _married_ at sixty, it did the very county, not to speak of those parishes which had the best right to the news, good. This was the way in which life passed at Mount. And hitherto Anne had supplemented and made it lively with a hundred pursuits of her own. Even up to the beginning of August, when Mr. Douglas, who had left various reminiscences behind him of his Christmas visit, came back--having enjoyed himself so much on the previous occasion, as he said--Anne had continued in full career of those vigorous fancies which kept her always interested. She had sketched indefatigably all the spring and early summer, growing almost fanatical about the tenderness of the shadows and the glory of the lights. Then finding the cottages, which were so picturesque, and figured in so many sketches, to be too wretched for habitation, though they were inhabited, she had rushed into building, into plans, and elevations, and measurements, which it was difficult to force Mr. Mountford’s attention to, but which were evidently a step in the right direction. But on Douglas’s second arrival these occupations had been unconsciously intermitted, they had been pushed aside by a hundred little engagements which the Ashleys had managed to make for the entertainment of their friend. There had been several pic-nics, and a party at the rectory--the first since Mrs. Ashley’s death--and a party at the Woodheads’, the only other people in the parish capable of entertaining. Then there had been an expedition to the Castle, which the Meadowlands, on being informed that Charley Ashley’s friend was anxious to see it, graciously combined with a luncheon and a ‘game’ in the afternoon. And then there was the game at Mount on all the other afternoons. Who could wonder, as Mrs. Mountford said, that something had come of it? The young men had been allowed to come continually about the house. No questions had been asked, no conditions imposed upon them. ‘Thou shalt not make love to thy entertainer’s daughter’ had not been written up, as it ought to have been, on the lodge. And now, all this was over. Like a scene at the theatre, opening up, gliding off with nothing but a little jar of the carpentry, this momentous episode was concluded and the magician gone. And Anne Mountford returned to the existence--which was exactly as it had been of old.