Mary came back from her travels a most composed and dignified young matron, bearing her honors sweetly, yet with a mild consciousness of their importance. I say young, for though she was forty she had always preserved her slim youthfulness of aspect, and the unwrinkled brow which belongs to a gentle temper and contented soul. She looked younger as Lady Frogmore than she had done as Miss Hill. The simple dresses, which were perhaps a little too simple for her age, had not become her so well as those she now wore, the rich silks and velvets which the ladies at the vicarage felt and pushed and admired with an elation of soul in regarding “Our Mary,” which it would be impossible to put into words. Mrs. Hill herself had now a velvet dress, a thing to which she had looked wistfully all her life as the acme of woman grandeur without any hope of ever attaining it; and Agnes had been supplied with a little trousseau to enable her to pay in comfort her first visit to the Park. But when Mary appeared in the Frogmore diamonds at the head of her own table, receiving the best people in the county, Agnes was silent in awe and admiration. For Mary Hill, who had never asserted herself anywhere, had insensibly acquired the self-possession of her new rank, her sister could not tell how. And the little old gentleman beamed like a wintry sun upon his household and his guests. Impossible to imagine a kinder host, a more delightful brother-in-law. He was good to everybody who had ever had to do with Mary--the old aunts in London; even, oddly enough, Ralph Ravelstone, who so frankly informed Lord Frogmore of his intention to marry Mary had all gone well with him. There had been an additional little episode about Ralph which nobody knew of, not even Mary herself. For Lord Frogmore had received from Mrs. John Parke, a day or two before the marriage, the note which Mary had written to Ralph begging him to meet her at the sundial in the grounds of Greenpark on that eventful day Lord Frogmore had made his first appearance. The reader may recollect that this note had been an urgent appeal for an interview, when Letitia had demanded of Mary that she should send Ralph away. Lord Frogmore burnt the little note, which, indeed, was evidently a note written in great perturbation of mind, and drew his wife into conversation upon the events of the day, from which he very speedily understood the situation, and the exact character of Mary’s intercourse with Ralph. He replied by a most polite note to Letitia, informing her that he was very glad to be able to do, in response to her friendly recommendation, something for her brother--not, perhaps, equal to his merits, but the best that was in his power--by making Ralph agent for his Westmoreland property. There was not very much responsibility, nor a large income, but at all events a life of activity and freedom which he believed was in consonance with Mr. Ravelstone’s habits and tastes. Letitia was entirely overwhelmed by