How full the place seemed of her presence! Yet he had to turn sadly away. The buds in the giant beeches were bursting already into tender green leaves; the birds were twittering and singing in the hedgerows, and the kine lowed amid the deep spring grass of yonder meadows; 'the deep bell' swung in the distant tower of Chilcote Church; the dogs barked sharply in an adjacent farm-yard; and close and nigh was the hum of the bee, as it thrust its golden head into the cups of the spring flowers in the now neglected garden. To his senses all seemed unchanged as when he last saw Alison there; and where was she now--his love--his promised wife? Where again was she gone? Into the hard and chilly world--all the colder and more perilous now that her father was dead, and that she must stand alone in it? Alone! Bevil Goring felt his heart wrung by irrepressible anxiety, and he bethought him at once of appealing to the vicar of the parish, who could not fail to possess some information on the subject. The latter received him with considerable suavity, for he was a kind-hearted old gentleman, but eyed him keenly under his bushy white eyebrows. He had heard--but how, he knew not, for gossip spreads fast in a secluded country parish; yet he had heard that there was a young officer from the camp, who was wont to hover near Chilcote Beeches, and who was eminently distasteful to the late Sir Ranald, for reasons best known to the latter; so the worthy vicar fashioned his answers accordingly. Bevil, however, learned that Alison had been resident for many weeks at Chilcote after her return from the Continent, and prior to the demise of her father. Many weeks! thought he, and yet she had never written, as she might have done, to his address at the camp, whence letters were forwarded to his address in London. Poor Alison had not written because she knew he was absent, and, moreover, she was sorely pre-occupied at home. Was she under the influence of Cadbury? thought Bevil. Oh, that was impossible! Yet Goring began to feel, as Alison often felt, that their engagement--that its many trammels--was a very peculiar one, and would be so while her father lived. Now he was gone, and wealth had accrued to Goring, yet they were as much apart as ever! 'Sir Ranald was dead, yes,' he heard the vicar saying, 'and buried near the ancient yew in the churchyard, where Miss Cheyne meant in time to erect a marble cross.' 'That shall be my duty,' observed Goring. 'Yours?' said the vicar, inquiringly, and again the bushy brows were knitted. 'Poor man! he is sleeping where I know he did not want to lie, in my churchyard; yet he will sleep as soundly there in English earth, let us hope, as if he lay among his ancestors in Ellon Kirk, among mailed knights, mediæval bones, and the _Hic jacets_ of other days,' he added, smiling. 'Where has Miss Cheyne gone to?' 'London,' replied the vicar, curtly. 'Can you give me her address?' asked Goring, eagerly.