partially to blame, made any great difference to the squire. There had no doubt been moments, and even hours, when he had felt it bitterly; but these moments, though perhaps they count for more than years in a man’s life, do not certainly last so long, and age has a way of counterfeiting virtue, which is generally very successful, even to its personal consciousness. Mr. Musgrave was generally respected, and he felt himself to be entirely respectable. He sat in his library and worked away among his county histories, without either compunction or regret--who could throw a stone at him? He had been rather unfortunate in his family, that was all that could be said. And Mary Musgrave, his daughter, was just as little disposed to brood upon the past. She had shed many tears in her day, and suffered many things. Perhaps it was in consequence of the family troubles which had come upon her just at the turning-point in her life that she had never married; for she had been one of the beauties of the district--courted and admired by everybody, and wooed by many: by some who indeed still found her beautiful, and by some who had learned to laugh at the old unhappiness of which she was the cause. Miss Musgrave did not like these last, which was perhaps natural; and even now there would be a tone of satire in her voice when she noted the late marriage of one or another of her old adorers. Women do not like men whose hearts they have broken, to get quite healed, and console themselves; this is perhaps a poor feeling, but it is instinctive, and though it may be stoutly struggled against in some cases, and chidden into silence in many, it still maintains an untolerated yet obstinate life. But neither the failure of the adorations she once inspired nor the family misfortunes had crushed her spirit. She lived a not unhappy life, notwithstanding all that had happened. It was she who did everything that was done at Penninghame. The reins which her father had dropped almost unawares she had taken up. She managed the estate; kept the bailiff in order; did all business that was necessary with the lawyer; and what was a greater feat still, kept her father unaware of the almost absolute authority which she exercised in his affairs. It had to be done, and she had not hesitated to do it; and on the whole, she, too, though she had suffered many heartaches in her day, was not unhappy now, but lived a life full of activity and occupation. She was forty, and her hair began to be touched by grey--she who had been one of the fairest flowers of the north country. A woman always has to come down from that eminence somehow; whether she does it by becoming some one’s wife or by merely falling back into the silence of the past and leaving the place free for others, does not much matter. Perhaps, indeed, it is the old maid who has the best of it. A little romance continues to encircle her in the eyes of most of those who have worshipped her youth.