"Not to the Court?"
"To the Court! Why, of course not. What should we have to do at the Court at half-past seven in the morning?"
"But I am going straight home to papa, am I not?"
"Certainly."
And then, after staring at his niece's bewildered countenance for a few moments, Mr. Oliver exclaimed,——
"Why, surely, Clary, your father told you——"
"Told me what, uncle?"
"That he had sold Arden."
"Sold Arden! O, uncle, uncle!"
She burst into tears. Of all things upon this earth she had loved the grand old mansion where her childhood had been spent. She had so little else to love, poor lonely child, that it was scarcely strange she should attach herself to lifeless things. How fondly she had remembered the old place in all those dreary years of exile, dreaming of it as we dream of some lost friend. And it was gone from her for ever! Her father had bartered away that most precious birthright.