She thought of these simple things, poor child, having so little else to think about, on this, her coming home. She was not so foolish as to expect any warm welcome from her father. If he had brought himself just to tolerate her coming, she had sufficient reason to be grateful. It was only a drive of two miles from Holborough to Arden. They stopped at a lodge-gate presently; a little gothic lodge, which was gay with scarlet geraniums and chrysanthemums, and made splendid by railings of bronzed ironwork. Everything had a bright new look which surprised Miss Lovel, who was not accustomed to see such, perfect order or such fresh paint about her father's domain. "How nice everything looks!" she said. "Yes," answered her uncle, with a sigh; "the place is kept well enough nowadays." A woman came out to open the gates--a brisk young person, who was a stranger to Clarissa, not the feeble old lodge-keeper she remembered in her childhood. The change, slight as it was, gave her a strange chill feeling. "I wonder how many people that I knew are dead?" she thought. They drove into the park, and here too, even in this autumn season, Clarissa perceived traces of care and order that were strange to her. The carriage road was newly gravelled, the chaos of underwood among the old trees had disappeared, the broad sweeps of grass were smooth and level as a lawn, and there were men at work in the early morning, planting rare specimens of the fir tribe in a new enclosure, which filled a space that had been bared twenty years before by Mr. Lovel's depredations upon the timber. All this bewildered Clarissa; but she was still more puzzled, when, instead of approaching the Court the fly turned sharply into a road leading across a thickly wooded portion of the park, through which there was a public right of way leading to the village of Arden. "The man is going wrong, uncle!" she exclaimed. "No, no, my dear; the man is right enough." "But indeed, uncle Oliver, he is driving to the village." "And he has been told to drive to the village." "Not to the Court?" "To the Court! Why, of course not. What should we have to do at the Court at half-past seven in the morning?" "But I am going straight home to papa, am I not?" "Certainly." And then, after staring at his niece's bewildered countenance for a few moments, Mr. Oliver exclaimed,---- "Why, surely, Clary, your father told you----" "Told me what, uncle?" "That he had sold Arden." "Sold Arden! O, uncle, uncle!" She burst into tears. Of all things upon this earth she had loved the grand old mansion where her childhood had been spent. She had so little else to love, poor lonely child, that it was scarcely strange she should attach herself to lifeless things. How fondly she had remembered the old place in all those dreary years of exile, dreaming of it as we dream of some lost friend. And it was gone from her for ever! Her father had bartered away that most precious birthright.