“I think her a perfect jewel of a wife,” said Bessie with genuine kindness.  “My uncle Laurence and she are quite devoted to one another.  She sings like a little bird, and it is beautiful to see her with those boys.  I wish we had them all at Abbotsmead.  And she is so pretty—­the prettiest lady I ever saw, except, perhaps, one.”

“And who was that one?” Miss Burleigh begged to know.

“It was a Miss Julia Gardiner.  I saw her first at Fairfield at the wedding of Lady Latimer’s niece, and again at Ryde the other day.”

“Oh yes! dear Julia was very lovely once, but she has gone off.  The Gardiners are very old friends of ours.”  Miss Burleigh turned aside her face as she spoke.  She had not heard before that Miss Fairfax had met her rival and predecessor in Mr. Cecil Burleigh’s affections:  why had her dear Cecil been so rash as to bring them in contact and give her the opportunity of drawing inferences?  That Bessie had drawn her inferences truly was plain, from a soft blush and glance and a certain tone in her voice as she mentioned the name of Miss Julia Gardiner, as if she would deprecate any possible idea that she was taking a liberty.  The subject was not pursued.  Miss Burleigh wished only to forget it; perhaps Bessie had expected a confidential word, and was abashed at hearing none, for she began to talk with eagerness, rather strained, of Lady Latimer’s promised visit to Hartwell.

Lady Latimer’s arrival was signalized by an immediate invitation to Mr. Fairfax and his granddaughter to go over and lunch on a fixed day.  Bessie was never so impatient as till the day came, and when she mounted Janey to ride to Hartwell she palpitated more joyously than ever she had done yet since her coming into Woldshire.  Her grandfather asked her why she was so glad, but she found it difficult to tell him:  because my lady had come from the Forest seemed the root of the matter, as far as it could be expressed.  The squire looked rather glum, Macky remarked to Mrs. Betts; and if she had been in his shoes wild horses should not have drawn her into company with that proud Lady Latimer.  The golden harvest was all gone from the fields, and there was a change of hue upon the woods—­yellow and red and russet mingled with their deep green.  The signs of decay in the vivid life of Nature could not touch Bessie with melancholy yet—­the spring-tides of youth were too strong in her—­but Mr. Fairfax, glancing hither and thither over the bare, sunless landscape, said, “The winter will soon be upon us, Elizabeth.  You must make the best of the few bright days that are remaining:  very few and very swift they seem when they are gone.”