Helen Manningtree and Mrs. Chisholm pursued their customary mode of life at Knockholt Park after, as before, the departure of Sir Laurence. Helen missed the grave and courteous gentleman whom she had learned to like so much, and her at first distant association with whom had grown into intimacy and confidence. Sir Laurence was a most agreeable companion; well-informed; and entirely without any sort of pretension. He had seen a great deal of the world--in the geographical sense of the term, as well as in every other; and his anecdotes of travel and descriptions of foreign lands had unflagging interest for Helen, whose experience had indeed been narrow, but whose reading had been various and extensive. In the thoughtful mood into which Alsager had fallen--in the serious frame of mind which had become almost habitual with him now--he would probably have been voted a bore by "society," supposing that he had placed himself within reach of its suffrages; but Helen knew nothing of the tastes and fashions of the great world, and to her Laurence was all that was most companionable and pleasant. He was not indeed so gifted, so cultivated a creature as Cuthbert Farleigh; but then,--who was? who could be expected to be? And Helen, whose circle of acquaintance included a dozen unmarried men at the most, believed with perfect good faith that she had exercised the soundest judgment and discretion in her selection of the Reverend Cuthbert, from "all the world," as the individual to whom alone she could render unqualified respect and intrust the happiness of her future life. That resolution, before mentioned, by which the curate had bound himself, to himself, to wait until he should be a bishop, or for the occurrence of any other equally improbable event, was rather in the way of Helen's happiness, either present or future; but she was not much disquieted by the delay. Cuthbert had seen no symptoms of an alarming nature to indicate any "intentions" on Colonel Alsager's part prior to Sir Peregrine's death, and he was ignorant of the existence of the old Baronet's letter, in which he had urged a marriage with Helen upon Sir Laurence. He had begun to think, within a very few days of Colonel Alsager's arrival at Knockholt, that he had been foolishly apprehensive in the first instance. Was it at all likely that, at Colonel Alsager's age, and in his position, with his opportunities of seeing, and recommending himself to, the fairest and most fascinating women in the world, he should be entirely heart-free and ready to fix his affections upon his father's ward? Of course Cuthbert was quite aware that Laurence Alsager could never by any possibility have met any one half so worthy of admiration and of love as Helen Manningtree; but he was a young man of candid mind, and ready to acknowledge that a man might be preoccupied to the extent of being unable to recognize the unapproachable excellence of Helen without being guilty of