Such a change had taken place in the comforts and conduct of the house, that Margaret, with all her care could manage nothing. She was thwarted in all she did--eyed with jealousy on account of the praise bestowed upon her--taught continually to remember and know herself and her station--and to behave with more respect to her betters, or else to quit the house. Margaret had a sweet temper, and really loved her uncle and the children, or she could not have endured so long as she did the waywardness of this purse-proud woman. Matters had been going on in no very pleasant manner in Mr. Leader's cottage, and Margaret had found herself in a very uncomfortable situation. She had been quite removed from her honourable station, as governess of the family, and had been treated as a very unworthy menial by her ignorant aunt. While things were in this state, it so happened, that one evening in the month of April, Margaret was sent from her aunt's cottage to the village shop to purchase some article that was wanted for the morrow. It was late when she went out, and the shop stood completely at the end of the village. It was one of those general shops, half a good dwelling-house, and half a shop, where the respected tenant carried on a considerable business without much outward show. A lane branched off from the main street leading down to the vicarage, called the Church Road. It was, properly speaking, the Woodbridge Road from Brandiston. At the moment Margaret was passing over this crossway towards the shop, she was accosted by the familiar voice of one asking where Mr. William Leader lived. Margaret replied:-- "I am now come from Mr. Leader's. He is my uncle. Do you want to see him?" "No, Margaret, it is yourself I am in search of. Do you not know my voice?" It was William Laud! The reader must conceive the joy, the astonishment, the surprise, the fear, or all these sensations combined in one, which Margaret, the persecuted Margaret, felt in being thus accosted by her lover. Did it require any great persuasion to induce her to turn aside at such a moment, and walk a little way down the Church Road, past the Old Hall, with one she had not seen or heard of for so long a time; one whom, with a woman's faithfulness, she still loved with all the strength of her mind and heart? "I have been very ill, Margaret," said Laud, "since I came ashore and saw your father and brother. It was the very evening of the day you left home. Had you left one day later, I should have seen you, and, perhaps, I might have been spared a fever which has reduced me to the verge of the grave." "It is so long since I have seen or heard of you, William, that I began to think you had forgotten me."