Christabel kissed her and departed, Randie following to the door of her chamber--such a pretty room, with old panelled walls painted pink and grey, old furniture, old china, snowy draperies, and books--a girl's daintily bound books, selected and purchased by herself--in every available corner; a neat cottage piano in a recess, a low easy-chair by the fire, with a five-o'clock tea-table in front of it; desks, portfolios, work-baskets--all the frivolities of a girl's life; but everything arranged with a womanly neatness which indicated industrious habits and a well-ordered mind. No scattered sheets of music--no fancy-work pitch-and-tossed about the room--no slovenliness claiming to be excused as artistic disorder. Christabel said her prayers, and read her accustomed portion of Scripture, but not without some faint wrestlings with Satan, who on this occasion took the shape of Angus Hamleigh. Her mind was overcharged with wonder at this new phenomenon in daily life, a man so entirely different from any of the men she had ever met hitherto--so accomplished, so highly cultured; yet taking his accomplishments and culture as a thing of course, as if all men were so. She thought of him as she lay awake for the first hour of the still night, watching the fire fade and die, and listening to the long roll of the waves, hardly audible at Mount Royal amidst all the commonplace noises of day, but heard in the solemn silence of night. She let her fancies shape a vision of her aunt's vanished youth--that one brief bright dream of happiness, so miserably broken!--and wondered and wondered how it was possible for any one to outlive such a grief. Still more incredible did it seem that any one who had so loved and so lost could ever listen to another lover; and yet the thing had been done, and Mrs. Tregonell's married life had been called happy. She always spoke of the Squire as the best of men--was never weary of praising him--loved to look up at his portrait on the wall--preserved every unpicturesque memorial of his unpicturesque life--heavy gold and silver snuff-boxes, clumsy hunting crops, spurs, guns, fishing-rods. The relics of his murderous pursuits would have filled an arsenal. And how fondly she loved the son who resembled that departed father--save in lacking some of his best qualities! How she doated on Leonard, the most commonplace and unattractive of young men! The thought of her cousin set Christabel on a new train of speculation. If Leonard had been at home when Mr. Hamleigh came to Mount Royal, how would they two have suited each other? Like fire and water, like oil and vinegar, like the wolf and the lamb, like any two creatures most antagonistic by nature. It was a happy accident that Leonard was away. She was still thinking when she fell asleep, with that uneasy sense of pain and trouble in the future which was always suggested to her by Leonard's image--a dim unshapen difficulty waiting for her somewhere along the untrodden road of her