far out of the succession, and no grandeur of rank or anything else surrounding the wandering family. Carry’s imagination went back to that moment with a leap, ignoring, oh so thankfully! all that had gone between. She had hardly done much with her unfaithfulness to congeal her Edward’s enthusiasm, to turn him from his hopefulness to misanthropy and pessimism. He had fallen into apathy because he had been forsaken and unhappy. But now everything was to begin anew--a settled home on English ground, a position of his own in which his leisure and his peace should be undisturbed and his mind free to throw itself into the old studies. Who could doubt that with all this his energy and his enthusiasm would come back to him again? The house was near one of the charming little towns of Surrey. It was on the slope of a hill, a house partly antique for beauty, and with a new part built on behind, happily out of sight, for comfort. A wide landscape of breezy undulations stretched before the windows; the town, upon another low hill, all its red roofs picturesquely outlined among the trees, stood out a charming object in the view, not near enough to add any association of noise or gossip. The very railway ran in a cutting, invisible, though near enough to be exceedingly convenient, nothing but a puff of steam showing now and then over the trees. The landscape embraced, as it were, two worlds--heather and fir trees on one side, luxuriant English cornfields, woods, and villages on the other. The altitude of their hillside was not great, but as there was nothing greater about it, it might have been Mont Blanc for the feeling of wide atmosphere and sky; yet they were within a mile or two of the little country town, and within an hour and a half of London! What could be more delightful, combining every advantage? Carry had all the delight of a bride in furnishing her house--nay, of a bridegroom too, for one of her chief cares was to fit up a study for Beaufort, in which every taste should be satisfied. Though she was by nature so gentle and yielding a woman, she it was who was the purveyor of everything, who had the purse in her hands. The only thing upon which Beaufort had made a stand at the time of his marriage was this--that the money which was hers should remain with her, that he should have nothing to do with its expenditure. He had his own little income, which was very small, yet sufficed for his personal wants. He lived a fairy life, without any necessity for money, his house kept for him, his living all arranged, everything that he wanted or could desire coming without a thought; but he preserved his feeling of independence by having nothing to do with the expenditure. Thus Carry combined everything in her own person, the bride and the bridegroom--even something of the mother. Her drawing-room was fitted up according to all the new lights. She had weaknesses towards the æsthetic, and something of the delicacy of those heroines of Mr. Du