"What a sensible, nice, hospitable old man Lord Verney is; I think him _the_ most sensible and the _nicest man_ I _ever_ met," said Miss Charity, in an enthusiasm which was quite genuine, for she was, honestly, no respecter of persons. "And young Mr. Verney certainly looked very handsome, but I don't like him." "Don't like him! _Why?_" said Agnes, looking up. "Because I think him perfectly _odious_," replied Miss Charity. Agnes was inured to Miss Charity's adjectives, and even the fierce flush that accompanied some of them failed to alarm her. "Well, I rather like him," she said, quietly. "You _can't_ like him, Agnes. It is not a matter of opinion at all; it's just simply a matter of _fact_--and you _know_ that he is a most _worldly_, _selfish_, _cruel_, and _I_ think, _wicked_ young man, and you need not talk about him, for he's _odious_. And here comes Thomas Sedley again." Agnes smiled a faint and bitter smile. "And what do you think of _him_?" she asked. "Thomas Sedley? Of course I like him; we all like him. Don't you?" answered Charity. "Yes, pretty well--very well. I suppose he has faults, like other people. He's good-humoured, selfish, of course--I fancy they all are. And papa likes him, I think; but really, Charrie, if you want to know, I don't care if I never saw him again." "Hush!" "_Well!_ You've got rid of the Verneys, and here I am again," said Tom, approaching. "They are going up to Hazelden to see your father." And so they were--up that pretty walk that passes the mills and ascends steeply by the precipitous side of the wooded glen, so steep, that in two places you have to mount by rude flights of steps--a most sequestered glen, and utterly silent, except for the sound of the mill-stream tinkling and crooning through the rocks below, unseen through the dense boughs and stems of the wood beneath. If Lord Verney in his conciliatory condescension was grand, so was Vane Etherage on the occasion of receiving and forgiving him at Hazelden. He had considered and constructed a little speech, with some pomp of language, florid and magnanimous. He had sat in his bath-chair for half an hour at the little iron gate of the flower-garden of Hazelden, no inmate of which had ever seen him look, for a continuance, so sublimely important, and indeed solemn, as he had done all that morning. Vane Etherage had made his arrangements to receive Lord Verney with a dignified deference. He was to be wheeled down the incline about two hundred yards, to "the bower," to meet the peer at that point, and two lusty fellows were to push him up by Lord Verney's side to the house, where wine and other comforts awaited him. John Evans had been placed at the mill to signal to the people above at Hazelden, by a musket-shot, the arrival of Lord Verney at that stage of his progress. The flagstaff and rigging on the green platform at Hazelden were fluttering all over with all the flags that ever were invented, in honour of the gala.