Bruce's pale face was lighted up with interest and pleasure; the plans for the cottages had been made by himself, soon after his arrival in Wiltshire. That these plans were actually being carried out, had been purposely kept a secret from him, in order to give him a pleasant surprise. "Yon field seems to be divided into allotments," observed Captain Arrows. "Yes; that's one of the schemes of my father for improving the state of his peasants; he says that he had the notion from Bruce." "And how does Emmie like her new life?" asked the captain. "Emmie! why, she's a changed being--changed from the pale, clinging jessamine, into a bright apple-blossom!" cried Vibert. "Emmie is busy from morning till night; she drills her awkward squad of pinafored children in the barn, till a proper school can be built, and has actually coaxed them into washing their faces! She has a book like a parish register, with all the tenants' names put down, age, number of children, and all that sort of dry information; which seems, however, to interest her. Emmie ventures to enter the dirtiest cottage; but, somehow or other, soap and water are more freely used now than when she first came to the place. Emmie is a kind of guardian, or rather guardian-angel, to the poor. Why, she has even tackled an old ploughman, who was notoriously fond of his glass; and if he gives up gin and whisky, it will be all owing to the influence of the young lady. You will be as much surprised at the change in Emmie, as my father was yesterday, when old Blair told him that I was a steady, promising young man!" Vibert leaned back in his seat, and laughed so merrily, that had not the pony at least been steady, the accident of the first evening might have been repeated, by the chaise being upset into a ditch. Bruce neither shared the merriment nor joined in the conversation. Though young Trevor's health had by this time been greatly restored, his shattered nerves had not completely regained their tone. Bruce regarded Myst Court with extreme aversion, from the painful associations connected in his mind with the place, and would have been most glad had his father sold the estate at once. No one knew the shrinking dislike, almost amounting to loathing, with which Bruce thought of reoccupying the room next to that hateful bricked-up chamber in which he had suffered so much. The young man knew that other rooms in Myst Court had by this time been repaired and furnished, and twice had he taken up his pen to write a request that his apartment might be exchanged for another, and twice he had thrown down the pen, ashamed to betray such childish weakness. "I scorned, even in poor Emmie, what I deemed silly superstition," thought Bruce. "There is nothing that teaches one to feel for the infirmities of others like suffering, as I now do, from one's own."