Mildred Arkell: A Novel. Vol. 2 (of 3)

A Novel.
Mrs. HENRY WOOD,
AUTHOR OF EAST LYNNE, LORD OAKBURN'S DAUGHTERS, TREVLYN HOLD, ETC. ETC.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
LONDON: TINSLEY BROTHERS, CATHERINE STREET, STRAND. 1865.
All rights of Translation and Reproduction are reserved.
LONDON: SAVILL AND EDWARDS, PRINTERS, CHANDOS-STREET, COVENT-GARDEN.

MILDRED ARKELL.
A brilliant evening in July. The sun had been blazing all day with intense force, glittering on the white pavement of the streets, scorching the dry and thirsty earth; and it was not until his beams shone from the very verge of the horizon that the gay butterflies of humanity ventured to come forth.
Groups were wending their way to the Bishop's Garden: not the private garden of the respected prelate who reigned over the diocese of Westerbury, but a semi-public garden-promenade called by that name. In the years long gone by, a bishop of Westerbury caused a piece of waste land belonging to the grounds of his palace to be laid out as an ornamental garden. Broad sunny walks for the cold of winter, shady winding ones for the heat of summer, shrubberies and trees, flower-beds and grass-plots, miniature rocks and a fountain, were severally formed there; and then the bishop threw it open to the public, and it had ever since gone by the name of the Bishop's Garden. Not to the public indiscriminately—only to those of superior degree; the catering for the recreation of the public indiscriminately had not come into fashion then. It had always lain especially under the patronage of the residents of the grounds, and they took care—or the Cerberus of a gatekeeper did for them—that no inferior person should dare venture within yards of it: a tradesman might not so much as put his nose through the iron railings to take a peep in.