How time has slipped over since we were last here, in the midst of the Welsh mountains! It is more than a year, but still wonderfully little has gone on in that interval. The larch-trees at Dalradern have added some palms to their stature, but the venerable oaks and elms disdain to show by change the influence of so brief a period, and, in the same way, it is in Kate alone—that plant of rapid growth—that we have much alteration to mark.

What a change has been wrought in her! It is not merely that she has grown into a tall and graceful girl, but that one by one the little traits of her peasant origin have faded away, and she looks, and seems, and carries herself with all the air of a high-born beauty. In her lofty brow, her calm features, her manner, in which a quiet dignity blends with a girlish grace, and, above all, in her voice singularly sweet-toned as it was, might be read every sign of that station men distinctively call the “best.”

Masters and professors of every kind had surrounded her, but she had a sort of indolent activity in her disposition, which tended little to the work of learning, while her quickness enabled her to pick up smatterings of many things. But, as she said herself, Sir Within was her best teacher. The old minister’s tact, his social readiness, his instinctive seizure of the nice points of every situation,—these were the gifts that had a special attraction for her; and while she was envying him the charm of a manner that could captivate all, from the highest to the humblest, she had actually acquired the gift and made it her own.

To recognise in her the traits on which he most prided himself, to see in that lovely girl his pupil in the arts of society, to mark in her a copyist of himself in the little tricks of manner and effect, was the greatest of all flatteries; and he never wearied of watching her repeating himself before him in a form so captivating and so graceful.

Although he had lost—and it was a loss he deplored—the friendly intercourse with the Vyners, and although the neighbourhood more strictly than ever quarantined him now, no representations nor remonstrances could prevail upon him to send Kate to a school, or to place her under other protection than his own. Innumerable were the governesses who had come down to take charge of her; none, however, remained long. Some alleged it was the solitude that oppressed them; others averred that their pupil would submit to no discipline but such as she liked, and that not alone the studies she would pursue, but even the hours she would devote to them, should be at her own choosing.

And one or two took higher ground, and declared that the establishment which contained an old bachelor and a very beautiful ward, was not in a position to confront the criticisms of the world.

To such as have not known, or met with the class Sir Within pertained to, it will perhaps seem incredible that the old rake actually felt flattered by this attack on his reputation. All that he had ever known of life was passed amongst people of admirable manners and very lax morals. They were the best bred, the best informed, the best dressed, and the pleasantest in the universe. Nowhere was life so easy and agreeable as in their company; every one was kind, considerate, and obliging; not a hard word was ever dropped. Who could be uncharitable where all was tolerated? Who could be severe where everything was pardoned?

It was by a very easy induction that he was led to believe that a certain laxity on the score of morals was an essential element of good breeding, and that nothing was so low in tone as that “eternal scrutiny,” as he called it, into one’s neighbours’ habits, which would make of a gentleman very little other than a detective.

When he heard, therefore, that a certain Mademoiselle La Grange had taken her departure on these exceptional grounds, he actually chuckled with delighted vanity.

“So ‘Ma Mie’”—this was his pet name for Kate—“they tell me that Mademoiselle has gone off this morning,” said he, “no longer able to tolerate a house where there is no mistress.”

“The note she left behind her went fully into the matter,” said Kate. “It was not alone that you were unmarried, but that you were a very well-known monster of vice.”

“Vrai! vrai!” cried he, with ecstasy; “monstre Épouvantable!”

“And, to confirm it, she added, that no one came here; that the neighbours avoided the house, as the abode of a plague; and even sight-seers would not gratify the craving of their curiosity at the cost of their propriety.”

“Did she say all that?”

“Yes; she said it very neatly, too; as prettily and as tersely as such impertinence can be put in nice French.”

“And this is the ninth departure, is it not, Ma Mie, on these high grounds of morality?”

“No, Sir; only the fifth. Two alleged loneliness, one accused the damp, and one protested against my temper!”

“What had you done, then?”

“Everything that was cross and ill natured. It was the unlucky week that Cid Hamet staked himself.”

“I remember; there were two days you would not come down to dinner on pretence of headache, and you told me afterwards it was all ill humour.”

“Because I always tell you everything,” said she, with a smile so captivatingly beautiful, that it lit up her fave as the sun lights up a landscape.

“I am sorry, too,” said he, after a short silence, “that Mademoiselle should have gone away at this moment, for I am expecting visitors.”

“Visitors, Sir?”

“Yes, child; two distant, very distant relatives of mine are coming to-day; less, indeed, to see me than the place I live in. They are my heirs, Ma Mie; and the world says, no sort of people are less palatable to the man in possession, and, I take it, the world is right in the matter. When one thinks how he dislikes the man who keeps the newspaper too long at the club, it may be imagined how he is hated who keeps another out of an estate; and the sense of being so hated engenders something that is not friendship!”

“I think I can understand that feeling!” said she, thoughtfully.

“Every one knows,” continued he, “that when he is gone, the objects which he has loved and cherished—I mean the material objects, for I am talking as an old bachelor—will survive to give pleasure to others; but somehow he fancies—at least, I fancy—that the new incumbent will not know the full luxury of the shade under that sycamore where we sat yesterday to watch the fish in the pond; that he’ll never appreciate that Claude as I do, when I let a fresh blaze of sunlight on the opposite wall, and see it in a soft reflected light; and as to the delight of riding through these old wooded alleys as I feel it, he’ll not have you for a companion—eh, ma belle et bonne?”

She turned away her head. Was it shame, or sorrow, or both? Who knows? “What are your friends like?” asked she, suddenly.

“They are very like each other, and not like anything or any one else I ever met. They are, first of all, descendants of an old Huguenot family of excellent blood. Their ancestors settled here, and, like most others, they prospered. One became a Peer, but died without an heir, and the title became extinct. The present head of the house is this person I expect here to-day, with his son. He is a banker, as his son is. They are very rich, and very eager to be richer. Report says that they are not very generous or free-handed. My own experience can neither refute nor confirm the rumour. Their London house was very handsome when I saw it, and when I dined there everything bespoke the habits of wealth; but they had a sort of air of business in their reception, a look of doing something that was to redound to the bank, that I didn’t like. The company, too, was of that mixed character that showed they were less familiars than clients.”

“How intensely acute to detect all this at once!”

“I am nothing, Ma Mie, positively nothing, if I am not ‘fin.’ It is the spirit of my old calling that survives in me. Nay, I even thought, in the distributions of the host’s attentions to his friends, I could name the men who stood with a goodly balance to their account, and point out those who were being, what is called, accommodated.”

“Oh, this is too much!” said she, laughing; but there was nothing in her tone or look that implied a shade of incredulity.

“Well, you are to see them both to-day; they will be here to dinner.” He said this with a half-suppressed sigh, for the visit promised him very little that was agreeable.

He was essentially a man of conventionalities, and there were some difficulties in the present case that embarrassed him. First, he should be unable to have any dinner company to meet his visitors. He had long ceased to have intercourse with his country neighbours, and, of course, none would think of “calling” on his friends. This was provoking enough, but a greater trouble remained behind it. Kate’s presence! How was he to account for that? Who was she? Why was she there? Who, and what, and where were her friends? Would not the Ladarelles at once connect the estrangement in which he lived from all society with the fact of this girl being beneath his roof? Would they not at once jump to the conclusion, It is this scandal has deterred all from visiting him? Now, it is just possible that something in this allegation against his morality might have tickled the morbid vanity of the old rake, who loved to think that youth and vice were convertible terms, and he even smirked as he imagined himself called on for his defence. Still, in his element of gentleman, there survived the shame of the part that would be assigned to Kate by such an imputation, and it is but justice to him to say that he felt this acutely. Had there been time for such an arrangement, he would have procured a governess, and sent her away to some sea-side spot. As it was, he thought of taking the Vyners’s Cottage, and placing her there under the charge of Mrs. Simcox. This would have been easy, as the Cottage had been advertised to let for some time back; but, as ill luck would, have, it, some one had just arrived there, whether as friend or tenant, none knew.

It was true, he might keep her unseen for, the few days the visit would last. The Castle was ample enough to secure a retreat which should be inviolable; but there were difficulties, too, about; this, not easily to be met.

He could not implicitly rely on the discretion of servants, especially of servants who found themselves in, the presence of the coming heir, of him who should be “king hereafter;” and again, he was not quite sure how she herself would meet a proposition that assigned her so equivocal a position. She was very proud, and on one or two occasions he had seen her display a spirit that no old gentleman of his stamp would possibly expose himself to from a young girl, if he could help it. There was, then, nothing left but to present her as his ward, a word so wide in acceptance, that he trusted it might defy scrutiny, and with this resolve, though not without misgivings, he went about giving his orders, and directing the arrangements to receive his guests.

Even this office had its shade of sadness, pleasant as it is at ordinary times to prepare for those who come to enliven solitude or break a monotony, which even of itself savours of gloom; the task is not so agreeable if undertaken for those who come to inspect what will be their own hereafter; what, even as they survey, they seem half inclined to grasp; what, while they look at, they speculate on the changes they will effect in, thinking of that day when he, who now does the honours, shall have left the stage, and they themselves become the actors.

Kate, however, accompanied him everywhere, aiding by her counsels and assisting by her suggestions, and serving in this way to dispel much of that depression which the task imposed. It was, as they both were returning from one of the gardens, that a keeper came forward with a dead pheasant in his hand.

“A hen! Michael, a hen!” cried Sir Within, with displeasure.

“Yes, Sir, and a very fine one. It was the gentleman who has just come to Dinasllyn shot her this morning. I met him coming up here to excuse himself to you, and say how sorry he was. He gave me this card, and hoped you’d not be displeased at it.”

“What’s the name? I have not got my glass, Kate.”

“Mr. George Grenfell, Sir, Dover-street.”

“Grenfell, Grenfell—never heard of any Grenfells but Cox and Grenfell, the Piccadilly people, eh?”

Kate gave no answer, but still held the card, with her eyes fixed upon it.

“Sad thing to shoot a hen—very sad thing—and a remarkably fine bird; quite young, quite young,” muttered Sir Within to himself. “Could scarcely be the game sauce Grenfell, I think, eh, Kate? This apology smacks of the gentleman. What was he like, Michael?”

“A fine-looking man, Sir, standing as tall as me; and about thirty-six or thirty-eight, perhaps. He had a nice spaniel with him, Sir, one of the Woburn breed; I know ‘em well.”

“I’m sorry he shot that hen. Ain’t you, Kate?”

But Kate was deep in thought, and did not hear him.