Miss Winter remained in London with her aunt three or four days. She had some purchases to make preparatory to her nuptials, and consultations to hold with her dressmaker. Neither did Mrs. Carlyon care to quit her house again without giving a few days to it. On the morning preceding that on which they were to travel down to Heron Dyke, they were surprised, not knowing he was in London, to see Conroy. He had been somewhere in the country. "And my visit was a failure," he said to Ella: "the friend whom I went to see was absent from home. I waited a day or two; but as he did not return, I came up here.--Have you been house-hunting?" he carelessly asked. "House-hunting!" she repeated. "No." "Seeing that Heron Dyke is to be given up, it will be necessary to fix upon some nest or other, will it not?" he continued. Ella's eyelashes grew wet in a moment, and she turned away her head. A little while, and the old home that she had known and loved all her life would be hers no longer: how bitter the parting would be, no one but herself could tell. "And there will be the furniture to select," continued Conroy, in the same light tone; "chairs, and tables, and carpets, and fire-irons, and a thousand other things that we can't do without: but all that I shall leave to you." "I hope you won't do anything of the kind," said Ella, in some alarm. "I should be the greatest ignoramus in the world at selecting furniture." "And I should not be one whit better," lamented Conroy. "Mrs. Carlyon, we shall have to fall back upon you. You must purchase for us." "Time enough for that," returned Mrs. Carlyon, rather crossly. Any reminder of the giving up of Heron Dyke put her out at once. "You intend to travel, you both tell me, for two or three months after your marriage: you can come to me when you return and look out for a house then." "So be it," said Conroy. Mrs. Carlyon and Ella returned to Heron Dyke together, Conroy travelling to Nullington with them. Just to make sure that they got down in safety, he observed, laughingly: on the next day, or the next day but one, he should have to go back again. It was with a heavy heart that Ella entered her many-years home. Not much longer would she be able to call it her own: indeed the feeling of its being hers had already left her. In her heart she began to say farewell to all the sweet familiar places that seemed now almost as if they were a part of herself. No whisper had yet gone abroad of any impending changes at the Hall. Neither had the servants been spoken to. It was best to keep the matter quiet until the last moment drew nearer. So long as she remained at the Hall, Miss Winter did not care to become an object of commiseration, or listen to the condolences of the neighbourhood; after she was gone people might talk as they pleased.