“I sometimes think we might have been happier if we had been poorer,” Maude said, dreamily, by-and-by. “I can’t help fancying how we might have lived in some quiet country place, in a low-roofed, old-fashioned cottage, with a garden all round it and a churchyard close by, and the smell of cows and the cooing of pigeons; and then I need not have been separated from----.” She did not finish the sentence; she was talking to herself rather than to Julia. Her face was beautified by an inexpressible softness and tenderness as she murmured that broken sentence. Her thoughts wandered back to the time in which she and Harcourt Lowther had sworn eternal constancy, standing with their hands locked together in the dim summer twilight, on the bank of the shadowy river. She thought of that time, and all the freshness of feeling that had gone down with it came back upon her suddenly, like a breath of air from a distant ocean. How frivolous her life had been since then!--how selfish and useless! What a round of dress and decoration, and hurry and weariness! Harcourt Lowther’s last letter was in her pocket as she sat musing despondently by the hired Brighton hearth;--his last letter, a most melancholy epistle, full of despairing lamentations about the bitterness of separation and the hardships of Van Diemen’s Land. And over and above all these feminine perplexities which tormented poor loving Maude, there seemed real cause for anxiety in the state of Mr. Hillary’s health. It was not that the merchant himself complained; he did not complain, and, indeed, appeared to resent any inquiries as to his state, even when those inquiries came from such a privileged person as his only child. But every morning at the breakfast-table, sitting opposite to her father in the bright sunlight, Maude could see a darker shade under Mr. Hillary’s eyes, a more weary look about his haggard face. She defied his anger very often, and pleaded earnestly with him, imploring him to consult a physician; but his answer was always very much the same. “I am subject to this sort of headache; my work in Moorgate Street is peculiarly hard just now. Pray do not trouble yourself, Maude; there is not the least occasion for any uneasiness about my health.” With such assurances as these Miss Hillary was compelled to be satisfied. There had been an air of coldness, or almost displeasure, in her father’s manner to her lately, and Maude found to her surprise that he was by no means pleased with the matrimonial engagement that had arisen between Julia Desmond and Francis Tredethlyn.