Howard ever ready to guide and to sympathise, and there was the field of Nature spread before him to fill his heart with increased and glowing adoration and reverential love. It was well for Herbert his parents were such as could understand and sympathise in these exalted feelings; had harshness, or even neglect, been extended over his childhood and his opening youth, happiness, such as had gilded his life, would never have been his. As Emmeline had rejoiced, so also might have Herbert, as they neared the gates of his home, had there not been one recollection to dim his happiness. She who had shared in all his pleasures, who had shed a charm over that spot, a charm which he had never felt so keenly as when he looked for it, and found it not; the favourite playfellow of his infancy, the companion of his youth, his plighted bride, she was in far distant lands, and vainly on his first return home did Herbert struggle to remove the weight of loneliness resting on his heart; he never permitted it to be apparent, for to his family he was the same devoted son and affectionate brother he had ever been, but painfully he felt it. Mr. Myrvin and his son were now both inmates of Mr. Hamilton's family. The illegality of the proceedings against the former, in expelling him from his ministry of Llangwillan, had now been clearly proved, for the earnestness of Mr. Hamilton permitted no delay; and tears of pious gratitude chased down the cheeks of the injured man, as he recognised in the person of his benefactor the brother of the suffering woman whom he had sheltered, and whose bed of death he had deprived of its sting. The persuasions of Mr. Hamilton succeeded in conquering his objections to the plan, and he consented to make Oakwood his home for a short time, ere he once more settled in his long-loved rectory. With Arthur, Ellen speedily resumed her place; the remembrance of that neglected little girl had never left Mr. Myrvin's mind, and when, radiant in animation and returning health and happiness, she hastily, almost impetuously, advanced to meet him, he pressed her to his bosom with the affection of a father; and even as a daughter Ellen devoted herself to him during his residence at Oakwood. He had been the first in England to treat her with kindness; he had soothed her childish sorrow, and cheered her painful duties; he had been the first since her father's death to evince interest for her, and though so many years had passed, that the little girl was fast verging into womanhood, yet such things were not forgotten, and Ellen endeavoured to prove the gratitude which time had not effaced.