“Gwyneth, my love! have you finished those extracts?” said her father. Gwyneth went on with her work in silence. “There’s the Abbey carriage crossing the green,” observed Mr. Ufford presently, he having sauntered away to the window, while the young ladies managed the details of business. Hilary changed color; she felt reluctant to meet Dora. “I had no idea they were in the country!” she observed, in a voice of discomfort. “Only Miss Barham is,” replied Mr. Ufford, looking with a little curiosity at Mrs. Hepburn’s face. “Miss Dora is gone to visit some friends in Northampton, I believe with her aunt, Lady Margaret, while the happy Huyton is in Germany. The carriage is coming here.” It did come, and Isabel entered the Vicarage exactly the same as ever in appearance; her sister’s engagement had made no outward change in her. It had been a disappointment, but she was too well-bred to show it; and, except in a hasty abandonment of London, there was no perceptible effect of the news. However, Dora herself could not be much more unwilling to discuss the affair than Isabel was, so it was a mutual accommodation that the sisters should part for the present. Miss Barham found herself suddenly weary of the London season, and much in want of rest and fresh air; to face Hilary, to see Hurstdene, to exist even at home, Dora felt impossible; and she arranged a hasty plan for accompanying her aunt into Northamptonshire, hoping that change of place and entire novelty would smother the thoughts which were burning in her heart, and diminish her regret, despair, and self-reproach. Miss Barham was immediately interested in the details of the business which had just been occupying the others; and both touched and grieved by the account of the precarious state of the first projector of the alterations. She had a right, she said, to be interested in any improvements of a church, which had so long formed part of their family property, and she insisted on having it all detailed to her. Mr. Ufford accordingly went through the plans, while she listened with a most graceful and marked attention. Then she asked, in a pretty, injured tone, why her father had not been consulted; and was hardly appeased by the assurance that Mr. Barham having done so much for the chancel a few years ago, nothing more was required at present, nor could they feel justified in calling on him for assistance in a matter of ornament which was purely the wish of Lord Dunsmore.