were collected to celebrate this great event, and what was the most extraordinary of all, Lady Frogmore, who went out so little, and to whom this was in some sort a hostile demonstration, was one of the guests. There was nothing in the whole programme about which the county neighbors, the spectators who watched and criticized Letitia, were so much interested as the demeanor of Lady Frogmore. She had not appeared among them for years, her story was full of mystery, she was said to be indifferent to, if not possessed by an aversion for her own son, her only child, who lived neglected in his uncle’s family. All these things gave excitement to the reappearance of the poor lady, whose pleasant ways so many remembered with kindness, and whose life had been so strangely and so terribly overcast. By this time the vicar of Grocombe and his wife were both dead. That Mary had been a dreadful disappointment to them, and that they had not at all approved of her conduct at the time of Lord Frogmore’s death, they had not hesitated to say, and Mrs. Hill has indeed been heard to declare that it gave her husband his death-blow. He had been so much disappointed in Mary! He had felt it such a dereliction of duty on her part to leave her son in the hands of the Parkes, people about whose religious principles there was no certainty, and it had helped him to his grave to think of little Mar being brought up perhaps in the most careless way, while his grandfather was a clergyman. Whether it was this mental trouble or bronchitis that removed the vicar at the ripe age of seventy-five, it is at all events certain that he did succumb, and that his wife did not long survive him. When the new vicar was appointed, Mrs. Hill came to her daughters at the Dower-house, but she never was happy there. She kept asking daily why was Mary there and not at the Park? Why had she abandoned her child?--it was nonsense to say that she had forgotten her child! Why, why had she left Mar? which indeed were very reasonable questions, but did not promote the happiness of the house. After her death the two sisters continued as before each other’s closest companions, and now with no divided duty, save that Mary was very tranquil in her secluded life, and that Agnes’ heart was racked with anxiety. She kept up a little correspondence with Mar, exchanging letters full of love and longing for his schoolboy epistles, in which there was not even the animation of a schoolboy, which poor Agnes looked for with the wildest anxiety, and cried over with the deepest disappointment when they came. How should he be able to respond--that undeveloped, heart-stunned boy--to her tenderness, the tenderness of an old mother, not even young to gain his sympathy? Agnes was the one who suffered amid all these differing interests and feelings. Now and then, at long intervals, she had a glimpse at her boy, a privilege which generally left her sadder than ever. “He looks so delicate,” she was