“But your dear lady, my loved and honoured young mistress, sir; for young she was when last I saw her.” Wilton removed his hat, and, gazing upwards, said in a low, impressive tone, yet tremulous with intense feeling-- “She is in heaven!” There was a solemn stillness for an instant. The housekeeper raised her handkerchief to her eyes, and Flora gently stole her hand into her father’s, and pressed it. Then the old man, with a burst of anguish, hurried up the staircase, and, parting in broken sentences with his daughter for the night, sought the retirement of the room prepared for him, and there battled with his sorrow alone. Flora, too, passed a part of the night in tears and prayer--tears for the loss of the gentle being she had loved so affectionately, and prayer for an angel-life with her hereafter in the ever-sunny regions of Paradise. Somehow, the form of Hal Vivian was interwoven with her thoughts and her prayers. She wept as her vision brought him to her eyes--she knew not wherefore; and her cheek hushed and burned as in fancy she saw his quiet, earnest gaze bent upon her face. The sun was penetrating brightly through the window of her sleeping chamber as she awoke. She pressed her beautiful eyes with the delicate tips of her soft fingers, and then, opening them, gazed around her, surprised and somewhat disappointed to find that she was no longer dreaming. As, with the assistance, of her maid, she attired herself, she gazed out of the window upon the lovely landscape spread before her Upland and woodland, valley and ridge, all clothed in luxuriant verdure, fair as eye ever rested upon, and her dreams were called up by the beautiful scene before her. A rosy blush mantled on her cheek as she remembered that Hal took part in her dreams, and probably she thought that, as with joy she had wandered with him in flowery meads and shadowy groves in her dream, the reality, if it were to occur here, would not be altogether distasteful to her. Again her cheek burned, and her gentle bosom heaved, as, in her mental dreams, she saw his full clear eye turned upon her with thoughtful fervour. Strange that she should not ask herself what this emotion meant. For the first few days she wandered with her father or alone over the more attractive portions of the property. Memory was busy all the while, and she sought to retrace spots and places she had in laughing childhood gambolled over. At the expiration of a week, Colonel Mires made his appearance. There was a change in the aspect of his features, his skin was of a white sallowness; his eye was brighter, and the edges of the eyelids were red, as if inflamed. His black hair seemed longer and to be straggling, as if the care originally displayed in its arrangement had been abandoned. His voice, too, was hoarser in its tone, and his manner appeared agitated and abrupt.