Here we must bid adieu to the courtly household, which is no longer associated with the history of our country, but which, in their new home, became comparatively happy and most prosperous.
Mistress Vines grew at length calm under her bereavement, and learned to say, in the meek spirit of religious love and divine faith, “Thy will be done.”
More than two hundred years have passed away since the princely dwelling was left to decay, but some traces of the old residence of a courtly household may still be found.
We hear the location sometimes called “Old Orchard,” because here are found fruit-trees heavy with the moss of age, and vines struggling for life amid the indigenous plants, fair exotics lost and overwhelmed by time.
CHAPTER XII.
A MAN OF METTLE.
Years rolled away, but they brought no peace to the mind of John Bonyton.
His was not the mind to bend to the storm, and extract submission from the precepts of Christianity, or that calm philosophy which learns at length to submit to the inevitable.
He brooded upon his loss day and night; he never again entered the roof of his father. Knowing the atrocious plan concocted beneath it, of charging Hope with witchcraft, he could not endure the sight of those whose cruelty he abhorred, and whose hypocrisy was too apparent to be excused.