lution not a little. Still, when the care of watching Lucy's toilette, advising and altering, was completed—no sinecure office, for Lucy, hitherto confined to the most quiet and staid costume, was rather inclined to run into the extreme of bright colours—when she had watched her walk down the field with Charles Aubyn, looking as pretty and as pleased as possible, and returned into their deserted chamber, its silence and solitude struck her forcibly. The gay peal of the bells came upon the air, mingled with music, which owed much of its melody to being afar off. She could observe flags waving in the distance, and now and then a gaily dressed group crossing one of the heights; but these were soon past. And as the view of their house was chiefly bounded by the forest, there was soon nothing to be seen—nothing, save the ringing bells, recalled the festivity to her mind.
Francesca was alone, quite alone in the house, and the consciousness of this was inexpressibly dreary; not perhaps but that on any other day she would have sat, read, and thought by herself quite as much as she had done to-day; still, the knowledge that there was no one near—that all others but herself were employed in one peculiar and cheerful pursuit, could not but force her into a vein of ungracious comparison. The extreme
