Her daughter strolled sometime listlessly in the garden, in that vacuity of mind which nearly resembles despair. She was like one walking in her sleep. But there were pleasant influences around her. The breeze fell lightly on her cheek, and wafted the dark hair from her forehead. She bent to meet it, like a bird. It came from the sea. Did it remind Mildred of the hawthorns on the cliff? She passed from her saunter on the lawn to her own apartment, and opened her heart in a letter to Mrs. Winston. For some time her pen coquetted with country trifles, as if the writer were trying to escape from an unpleasant topic which nevertheless forced itself into notice, and at last banished every other.
"It has all come true, my dearest sister," she wrote, "all your prediction has come true. Quiet among my flowers and books, our books, Gertrude, I was beginning to forget it. All the people paid us their visits and their compliments, and we duly returned them, and of him I saw and heard nothing. But you know all about it, for mamma told me she had written to you. It seems he was only to come to our party last night. Everybody we know, with many we can hardly be said to know, was here,—he among the rest; although I had not heard he was in the country, and only learned it from the announcement of his name. I believe I bore it like Gertrude's sister; but oh! dearest, how shall I tell you of my feelings when I saw that every one regarded us as engaged? I hate that us. And this morning mamma says my character is compromised. And I am in open and avowed rebellion.
"But this is not all, Gertrude, dear, that I have to tell you. I wish you to guess a little. I have seen our cousin, Mr. Trevethlan, who was at your party, you know. There is the first chapter of my romance. You are coming here soon, and then you shall know more. Till then, and always, believe me, your most affectionate sister,
"Mildred Pendarrel."
CHAPTER X.
Here, a bold, artful, surly, savage race—
Who, only skilled to take the finny tribe,
The yearly dinner, or septennial bribe,
Wait on the shore, and as the waves run high,
On the lost vessel bend their eager eye,
Which to their coast directs its venturous way—
Theirs, or the ocean's, miserable prey.
Crabbe.
"Did you hear what they're saying in the village yonder, Master Randolph?" old Jeffrey asked, as Trevethlan was passing through the gate, on the day after the party. "All the grand doings at Pendar'l?"
Randolph started a little.
"I saw the light in the sky," the warder continued, "and was thinking whose stacks had been fired this time, only it didn't last long now. And they tell me 'twas the squibs and things that were let off to entertain the company like."