‘Sir,’ it read, ‘if it be true there are reasons why you should not visit me, I pray you explain them. I am alone here: Campion at this moment is in Madrid. I have little to tell except that every available word of your writing I have perused, and won great pleasure therefrom; that I would willingly play student to your better intelligence: there are many things I would choose to learn from you. Write to me on your return from the country, and tell me that we may meet, and that shortly. All my old friends are alienated: you alone are left to remind me of an innocent past. But of this no more.--MILLICENT CAMPION.’ I went: she received me in state. The old Dowager-Countess of Dorel, blind and deaf by reason of her years, sat with us through the interview, and we talked to our hearts’ content. A pretty fable Lady Millicent told me; called by herself _The New Andromeda_, which she had writ for a fancy of her own. ’Twas of a young child tied to a rock for a warlock to devour--another Dragon of Wantley, forsooth. The babe, innocent of her fate, plays and frolics; Perseus--or More of More Hall, or what you will--comes by,--is too innocent to understand the danger--and little mistress is left for the warlock. I could see that she meant her own history: I was the useless hero--she, the victim. Old madam nodded in her chair the while. When the time came to depart Millicent said she was leaving London on the morrow by Sir Humphreville’s command, to retire to a country seat in the Yorkshire fells until her master’s return. Byland Grange was the place: if I would honour it with a visit, she would herself show me the riches of the hills and valleys. That there was little of the really happy in the world she made no doubt: let each choose his own joy. When I took her hand she said, ‘’Tis the same ring I wore at Dorel’s: as years passed it chafed and was enlarged: now it chafes again.’ Three days afterwards I started to follow her, half in hopes to come up with her equipage, but it seemed she had the advantage and ever kept a day in front. I rode the two hundred and forty miles in four days, and it was on a Sunday afternoon when I led my horse into the yard of the Campion Arms, and bespoke a chamber. My man followed by post with mails; but I did not wait for ceremony, and having eaten in haste, I passed through the stately gates of the park. A spacious wilderness lay before me, netted with undergrowth green in the spring’s triumph. Rivulets leaped across the clean stoned path, and crags frowned, their feet laved in clear pools, where strange waterfowl swam, their sides almost hidden beneath mosses and tangles of dove’s-foot. Here and there belvideres watched down vistas, terminated by fish-ponds or stairlike ranges of peaks.