"This is all of a piece with your fantastical scheme. Cambric! why Molly could wear that," continued Caleb, with the same rueful visage. "Dear, dear, what a tempting of Providence, hoarding and hiding in this miserly way, Miss Queenie. Why, as I said to Molly, our young lady can take one of those big new houses they are building near us, and have her carriage and her riding-horse; and no doubt she will visit at the Deanery, and at Rose Castle, and be an out-and-out fine lady; but I never thought it would come to this," dropping his hands on his knees in a low-spirited way. Queenie laughed, but she could not help an involuntary shudder at Caleb's picture of her future greatness. A house at Carlisle, a carriage, even prospective visits at the Deanery would be poor compensation if she must resign her friends at Hepshaw. Would not her fortune be productive of greater happiness, of more enduring pleasures than those Caleb offered her? "If I must be rich I will be rich in my own way," thought the girl, a little rebelliously; and all through that day and the next a thousand schemes and fancies flitted before her, as unsubstantial and impracticable as such airy castles generally prove themselves. A new and perfectly strange feeling of timidity came over her as the time drew near for her return to Hepshaw. Some complicated business arrangements had compelled her to lengthen her three days' visit into a week. Cathy had written to scold her for her delay; and Queenie had to ransack her brain to discover plausible excuses. "Garth has just come in from the works, and he bids me tell you that you must positively return on Saturday evening, as the school is to re-open on Monday," wrote Cathy. "They are getting on so nicely at the cottage that it will be quite ready for occupation in another ten days; and Langley has discovered a little jewel of a maid, who will just exactly suit you. Do you remember her--Patience Atkinson, the rosy-faced girl who lived next door to the wheelwright's?" Cathy's letter, with its girlish overflow of spirits and affectionate nonsense, caused Queenie a few moments' uneasiness. "I shall seem to be what I am not. I wonder if I am doing wrong to deceive them," she thought, with a sudden throb of startled honesty. "No; after all, it is my own business. I may spend, or hoard, or fling it all to the winds, and no one would have a right to complain of me." But, nevertheless, there was a guilty consciousness that made her for the first time shrink from meeting Garth Clayton's eye. It was evening when she arrived at Church-Stile House. Ted had met her at the station; Cathy and Emmie had come flying down the lane to meet them, and had greeted her rapturously. As she came across the moat, with the girls hanging on either arm, she saw Garth at the hall-door watching them.