Thinking of it, she fell into a melancholy that belonged to her character. She was tired with the incidents of the day. At dinner Mr. Fairfax seemed to miss something that had charmed him the night before. She answered when he spoke, but her gayety was under eclipse. They were both relieved when the evening came to an end. Bessie was glad to escape to solitude, and her grandfather experienced a sense of vague disappointment, but he supposed he must have patience. Even Jonquil observed the difference, and was sorry that this bright young lady who had come into the house should enter so soon into its clouds; he was grieved too that his dear old master, who betrayed an unwonted humility in his desire to please her, should not at once find his reward in her affection. Bessie was not conscious that it would have been any boon to him. She had no rule yet to measure the present by except the past, and her experience of his usage in the past did not invite her tenderness. A reasonable and mild behavior was all she supposed to be required of her. Anything else--whether for better or worse--would be spontaneous. She could not affect either love or dislike, and how far she could dissemble either she had yet to learn. CHAPTER XX. _PAST AND PRESENT._ The next morning Bessie was left entirely at liberty to amuse herself. Mr. Fairfax had breakfasted alone, and was gone to Norminster before she came down stairs. Jonquil made the communication. Bessie wondered whether it was often so, and whether she would have to make out the greater part of the days for herself. But she said nothing; some feeling that she did not reason about told her that there must be no complaining here, let the days be what they might. She wrote a long letter to Madame Fournier, and then went out of doors, having declined Mrs. Betts's proposed attendance. "Where is the village?" she asked a boy who was sweeping up fallen leaves from the still dewy lawn. He pointed her the way to go. "And the church and parsonage?" she added. "They be all together, miss, a piece beyond the lodge." With an object in view Bessie could feel interested. She was going to see her mother's home, the house where she was herself born; and on the road she began to question whether she had any kinsfolk on her mother's side. Mrs. Carnegie had once told her that she believed not--unless there were descendants of her grandfather Bulmer's only brother in America, whither he had emigrated as a young man; but she had never heard of any. A cousin of some sort would have been most acceptable to Bessie in her dignified isolation. She did not naturally love solitude. The way across the park by which she had been directed brought her out upon the high-road--a very pleasant road at that spot, with a fir wood climbing a shallow hill opposite, bounded by a low stone fence, all crusted with moss and lichen, age and weather.