Several days passed away very quietly after Leonora's first day and night at Lancaster Park. The girl stayed in the small rooms to which she was restricted quite as closely as the housekeeper could have desired. She did not even offer to go out, seeming to have tacitly resigned herself to the situation.

She unpacked one of her trunks and showed Mrs. West the sketches she had promised to show her; she took out all her pretty, simple black dresses, and hung them on their pegs in the little dressing-closet her aunt assigned her.

When she had nothing else to do she read or embroidered. Her aunt noted with pleasure that she was seldom idle.

She did not know of the long hours Leonora spent, when alone, curled up in a big easy-chair, with her milk-white hands folded in her lap, her eyes half shut, with the dark lashes drooping against the pink cheeks, and a thoughtful, puzzled expression on the fair face.

If she had seen her, Mrs. West would have wondered much what her niece was thinking about.

In the meantime, the gay life of the great folks at Lancaster went on from day to day.

Leonora saw no more of it, steadily declining the well-meant offers of her aunt to provide her with surreptitious peeps at it.

"I do not care about it," Leonora would say, with an eloquent glance at her black dress. "Gayety only jars upon me, auntie, dear. I should like to go out in the fresh air a little; but if I can not do that, I have no desire for the rest."

But Mrs. West, however willing she was, did not dare advise her niece to go out into the grounds where the guests might be encountered at any time, or even old Lady Lancaster herself.

She knew that Leonora's pretty face, once seen by the guests, would excite remark. It had already won the admiration of the house-maids.

These latter persons, having caught occasional glimpses of Leonora in their errands to the housekeeper's room, were disposed to be very sociable with the fair American girl; but Mrs. West put an end to their well-meant cordialities by saying, gently:

"My niece would rather not be disturbed; she is in great trouble; she has recently lost her father."

After that the maids did not court Leonora's society any more. They accepted her aunt's excuse good-naturedly and sympathetically, and contented themselves by talking about her among themselves, and praising her beauty, which they declared to each other was even greater than that of the young ladies who were sojourning at Lancaster—greater even than that of Lady Adela Eastwood, who, it was confidently whispered, was to be the next mistress of Lancaster Park.

Mrs. West grew downright sorry for her pretty prisoner, whose pink cheeks were fading in the close, dark rooms where she was kept. She said to herself that this would not do. She must not have poor Dick's orphan child pining for liberty and light and the blessed sunshine that was free to all.

"I will not do it; no, not if I have to leave Lady Lancaster's service and make a home for the girl elsewhere," she said to herself.

So one day she came into the little room where Leonora, sitting at the window, gazed wistfully out at the green grass and the blue sky, with an unconscious pathos on the sweet, girlish face.

"My dear, you are tired of this stuffy little chamber, I know," she said.

"Not very," said the girl, a little drearily. "I suppose I ought to be grateful to you for giving me such a home."

"Grateful to me for hiding you away in these little musty rooms, as if you hadn't the sweetest face the sun ever shone on!" cried the good woman, self-reproachfully. "Not a bit of it, my dear. I'm ashamed of myself for treating you so. It mustn't go on so, or your health will suffer, and so I shall tell Lady Lancaster; and if she won't allow you the liberty of the grounds, I will go away from here and make us a snug little home somewhere else, where we may come and go as we please; so there!" said the good woman, with sudden independence.

Leonora rose impulsively and went and kissed the homely face of her friend.

"Aunt West, would you really do that much for me?" she exclaimed, delightedly.

"Yes, I would," Mrs. West answered, firmly. "Poor Dick left you to me to take care of, and I'm bound to do the best I can for your happiness."

"Ah!" said Leonora, checking an impatient sigh.

"And I've come to tell you," Mrs. West continued, "that if you'd like to go and sketch the Abbey ruins, you may go this morning, Leonora."

"If I'd like!" cried the girl. "Oh, Aunt West! it's just what I was wishing for. I shall be so happy!"

"Yes; you shall go, dear, and stay all day, if you like. I'll put you up a nice cold lunch in a little basket, and I'll hire the lodge-keeper's boy to show you the way. I'll give him a shilling to go, and he will stay all day to keep you from getting frightened."

"I shall not be frightened," said Leonora, radiant.

"I don't know; it's still and lonesome-like there, and the bats and screech-owls might startle you. And there's an old dismantled chapel, too—"

"Oh, how lovely! I shall sketch that, too!" Leonora exclaimed, clapping her bands like a gleeful child.

"And a little old grave-yard," pursued Mrs. West. "Some of the old Lancasters are buried there. You might be afraid of their ghosts."

"I am not afraid of the Lancasters, dead or living," the girl answered, saucily, her spirits rising at the prospect before her.

She set forth happily under the convoy of little Johnnie Dale, the lodge-keeper's lad, a loquacious urchin who plied her with small-talk while he walked by her side with the lunch-basket Mrs. West had prepared with as dainty care as if for Lady Lancaster herself.

She did not check the boy's happy volubility, although she did not heed it very much, either, as they hurried through the grand old park, where the brown-eyed deer browsed on the velvety green grass, and the great oak-trees cast shadows, perhaps a century old, across their path.

When they had shut the park gates behind them, and struck into the green country lanes, bordered with honeysuckle and lilac, Leonora drew breath with a sigh of delight.

"How sweet it all is! My father's country, too," she said. "Ah! he was right to love these grand old English homes, although he was but lowly born. What a grand old park, what sweet, green lanes, what a sweet and peaceful landscape! It is no wonder that the English love England!"

She remembered how her father, now dead and buried under the beautiful American skies, had loved England, and always intended to return to it some day with his daughter, that she might behold his native land.

She remembered how often he had quoted Mrs. Hemans' lines:

"He loved the homes of England, although his fate was not cast with them," she said to herself. "Poor papa! I must try to love England for his sake; it was always dear to him, although he was fond of his kind adopted home, too!"

When they reached the ruins, she studied them carefully on every side to secure a picturesque view. She found that to get the best possible one she would have to sit down among the graves close to the little dismantled chapel.

"You bain't going to sit down amang them theer dead folk, missus?" inquired Johnnie, round-eyed, and on the alert for ghosts.

"Yes, I am. Are you afraid to stay, Johnnie?" she asked, laughing.

"Ya'as, I be," he replied, promptly.

"Very well; you may go off to a distance and play," said Leonora. "Don't let any one come this way to disturb me. And if you get hungry, you may have a sandwich out of my basket."

"I'm hungry now," he answered, greedily.

"Already, you little pig!" she cried. "Very well; take your sandwich now, then, and be off out of my way. I'm going to make a picture."

She sat down on the broken head-stone of an old grave, took out her materials, and while she trimmed her pencils, glanced down and read the name on the tomb beneath her.

It was Clive, Lord Lancaster.

Something like a shudder passed over her as this dead Lancaster, gone from the ways of men more than a century ago, recalled to her the living one.

"What do all the paltry aims and ambitions of our life matter, after all?" the girl asked herself, soberly. "The grave awaits us all at last!

Sitting there among the lonely green graves and broken, discolored monuments, with the ivy creeping over their dim inscriptions, Leonora, a little lonely black figure, began her sketch.

She worked industriously and skillfully, and nothing disturbed her for several hours.

Johnnie had availed himself of the opportunity to make an excursion into the woods on his own account, and she was quite alone; but nothing alarmed her, and she worked on fearlessly amid the fragrant stillness of the lovely June day, whose calmness was broken by nothing louder than the hum of the bees among the flowers, or the joyous carol of the sky-lark as it soared from earth to heaven, losing itself, as it were, in the illimitable blue of the sky.

The midday sun climbed high and higher into the sky, and Leonora, pausing over her nearly completed sketch, pushed back her wide hat from her flushed face, and stopped to rest, glancing around at the quiet graves that encompassed her.

"What a still and peaceful company we are!" she said, aloud, quaintly, never thinking how strange it looked to see her sitting there—the only living thing among the silent tombs.

Then all at once, as if the tenants of the grave had come to life, Leonora heard a soft babel of voices and laughter.

With a start she turned her head.

A party of gay young ladies and gentlemen were strolling toward her across the level greensward. Foremost among them was Lord Lancaster, walking beside the earl's daughter.

It was too late for retreat.

Every eye turned on the graceful figure sitting there so quietly among the graves of the dead and gone Lancasters.

As they passed the low stone wall that divided them, Lancaster lifted his hat and bowed low and profoundly.

Then they were gone, but an eager hum of masculine voices was borne back to her ears on the light breeze:

"By Jove! what a beauty!"

"Heavens! was that a ghost?"

"What a lovely being! Who is she, Lancaster?" She heard his deep, musical voice answer carelessly:

"It is Miss West—a young lady who is staying in the neighborhood for the sketching, I believe."

They went on toward the ruins.

Leonora, with a deeper color in her fair face, bent over her sketch and rapidly put some finishing touches to it.

"Now I wonder where little Johnnie can be?" she thought.

She glanced up and saw Captain Lancaster coming back to her.