As their barouche rolled smoothly along, Lord and Lady Falkingham fell into deep and earnest conversation: Blanche sat in the back seat, absorbed in her own meditations. The road lay through an open, hilly, and heathy country, watered by small rivulets, on the immediate banks of which were sometimes seen a solitary cottage, and, close around, a small patch of cultivated ground. It was a mild watery day, with little positive rain, but one in which the shifting lights and gleams of pale sunshine give a purple hue to the heathy hill-side, and a bright yellow to the green meadow, or the mossy swamp. Her eyes mechanically watched the varying hues, and at length fixed themselves upon a lonely turf-roofed hut in the valley below. "How peaceful must be existence in such a hut!" she thought within herself; "no worldly considerations, no aspirations after rank and situation, can there interfere with the affections. A strong arm and a willing mind are all that are required to authorize the peasant lover to seek the hand of his peasant mistress. Personal, individual qualities alone are considered,--not the adventitious recommendations of fortune. How much happier must be that rank of life, where love, and love alone, leads to an union which is to endure as long as life itself! Oh! if I could, in honour and in respectability, become the wife of De Molton, how willingly would I resign every luxury to which I have been born, and live in that very cottage, unnoticed and unknown! I think I could gladly perform even the household drudgery: I could feed the chickens and sweep the brick floor, and pile up the blazing faggots, and prepare my husband's evening meal--if that husband were De Molton!" She gazed upon the cottage as long as it remained in sight, and almost felt as if she left a place that was endeared to her by habit, when a turn in the road concealed it from her view. It may be much questioned whether Lady Blanche's view of the various conditions of life were a correct one, and whether there may not exist as much, or more, disinterested love in the higher orders than in the lower. But her thoughts continued, "And feeling thus, shall I promise entire, undivided, eternal love to another man? Has not my life been an enacted lie for the last fortnight? Can I make up my mind to continue for years and years this unceasing duplicity? I thought De Molton's image would have faded from my mind--I thought I should each day have become more attached to Lord Glenrith. I hear of so many happy wives who did not marry for love! But is this the case? No! his image rises to my mind's eye more frequently than ever, and I find my soul recoil more, every day, from poor dear Lord Glenrith's tenderness. I shall behave ill to him in breaking off the marriage, and I shall be called a jilt; but shall I not behave more ill to him by marrying him, when I feel as I now do? I will tell him the whole truth myself! It is a horrid alternative, but I cannot--I cannot marry him!"