“Stop, John,” cried my friend, “we shall get a much cleaner breakfast here than in the town, I dare say; and if there is anything to be seen there, we can walk to it;” so we alighted, and were shown into a neat little parlor, with white curtains, where an unexceptionable rural breakfast was soon placed before us. “Pray do you happen to know anything of a family called Lovell?” inquired my friend, whose name, by the way, was Markham. “Mr. Lovell was a clergyman.” “Yes, Ma’am,” answered the girl who attended us, apparently the landlord’s daughter, “Mr. Lovell is the vicar of our parish.” “Indeed! and does he live near here?” “Yes, Ma’am, he lives at the vicarage. It’s just down that lane opposite, about a quarter of a mile from here; or you can go across the fields, if you please, to where you see that tower; it’s close by there.” “And which is the pleasantest road?” inquired Mrs. Markham. “Well, Ma’am, I think by the fields is the pleasantest, if you don’t mind a stile or two; and, besides, you get the best view of the Abbey by going that way.” “Is that tower we see part of the Abbey?” “Yes, Ma’am,” answered the girl, “and the vicarage is just the other side of it.” Armed with these instructions, as soon as we had finished our breakfast we started across the fields, and after a pleasant walk of twenty minutes we found ourselves in an old churchyard, amongst a cluster of the most picturesque ruins we had ever seen. With the exception of the gray tower, we had espied from the inn, and which had doubtless been the belfry, the remains were not considerable. There was the outer wall of the chancel, and the broken step that had led to the high altar, and there were sections of aisles, and part of a cloister, all gracefully festooned with mosses and ivy; whilst mingled with the grass-grown graves of the prosaic dead, there were the massive tombs of the Dame Margerys and the Sir Hildebrands of more romantic periods. All was ruin and decay, but such poetic ruin! such picturesque decay! And just beyond the tall gray tower, there was the loveliest, smiling, little garden, and the prettiest cottage, that imagination could picture. The day was so bright, the grass so green, the flowers so gay, the air so balmy with their sweet perfumes, the birds sang so cheerily in the apple and cherry trees, that all nature seemed rejoicing. “Well,” said my friend, as she seated herself on the fragment of a pillar, and looked around her, “now that I see this place, I understand what sort of people the Lovells were.” “What sort of people were they?” said I. “Why, as I said before, interesting people. In the first place, they were both extremely handsome.” “But the locality had nothing to do with their good looks, I presume,” said I.