She has not married; why has she not married--that once admired of all admirers? Has it been that she, too, sharing the lot which she inflicted on so many, was not loved where she loved? or was it perhaps that she had made a mistake--sent away some one, perhaps, who knows, the very man who thought of her thus kindly and regretfully--whom she was afterwards sorry to have sent away? Nobody said this in words, but Mary Musgrave at forty was more tenderly thought of than Lady Stanton, who had been the rival queen of the county. Lady Stanton was stout now-a-days; in men’s minds, when they met her sailing into a ball-room, prematurely indued with the duties of chaperon to her husband’s grown-up daughters, there would arise a half-amused wonder how they could have worshipped at her feet as they once did. “Can this muckle wife be my true love Jean?” they said to themselves. But Miss Musgrave, who was slim as a girl in her unwedded obscurity, and whose eyes some people thought as bright as ever, though her hair was grey, gave rise to no such irreverent thoughts. There were men scattered through the world who had a romantic regard, a profound respect still, for this woman whom they had loved, and who had preserved the distinction of loving no one in return. Nobody had died for love of her, though, some had threatened it; but this visionary atmosphere of past adoration supplied a delicate homage, such as is agreeable even to an old maiden’s heart. And Miss Musgrave’s life was spent chiefly in the old hall, as her father’s was spent in his library. She had been full of gay activity in her youth, a bold and graceful horsewoman, ready for anything that was going; but, with the same sense of fitness that led the squire to his retirement, she too had retired. She had put aside her riding-habits along with, her muslins, and wore nothing but rich neutral-tinted silk gowns. Her only extravagance was a pair of ponies, which she drove into the county town when she had business to do, or to pay an occasional visit to her friends: but by far the greater part of her life was spent in the old hall, where all her favourites and allies came, and all her poor people from the village, who found her seated like a scriptural potentate in the gate, ready to settle all quarrels and administer impartial justice. The hall was connected with the house by a short passage and two doors, which shut out all interchange of sound. There was nothing above it but the high-pitched roof, the turret chimneys, and the ivy, nor was any interposition of servants necessary to usher in visitors by that ever-open way. This was a thing which deeply affected the spirits and feelings of Eastwood, the only male functionary in the house--the most irreproachable of butlers. A door which opened straight into the lady’s favourite sitting-room was felt by him to be an insult to the family; it was more like a farmhouse than a castle; and as for