CHAPTER VII.
"Alone! alone! how drear it is
Always to be alone!"
WILLES
It was only a few days after Adelaide had suggested to her brother the propriety of separating Elsie from her nurse, that he had the offer of a very fine estate in the immediate neighborhood of his father's plantation.
Mr. Granville, the present owner, was about removing to a distant part of the country, and having become somewhat reduced in circumstances, was anxious to sell, and as the place suited Mr. Dinsmore exactly, they were not long in coming to an arrangement, satisfactory to both, by which it passed into his hands.
Horace Dinsmore had inherited a large fortune from his mother, and having plenty of money at his command, he immediately set about making sundry improvements upon his new purchase; laying out the grounds, and repairing and enlarging the already fine old mansion, adding all the modern conveniences, and furnishing it in the most tasteful and elegant style.
And so "Rumor, with her thousand tongues," soon had it noised abroad that he was about to bring home a second wife, and to that cause many attributed Elsie's pale and altered looks.
Such, however, was not Mr. Dinsmore's intention.
"I must have a housekeeper," he said to Adelaide. "I shall send Chloe there. She will do very well for the present, and it will give me the opportunity I desire of separating her from Elsie, while in the meantime I can be looking out for a better."
"But you are not going to leave us yourself, Horace?" said his sister inquiringly.