The lime trees were turning yellow and thin of leaf; there was a fire all day in the octagon parlor.  It was autumn in Woldshire, soon to be winter.  It seemed to Bessie on her return like resuming the dull routine of a life that had gone on for a long while.  Mrs. Stokes, as her nearest and most neighborly neighbor, often ran across the park of an afternoon, but Bessie’s best delight was at post-time in the morning.  Mr. Fairfax never came down stairs to breakfast, and she had Harry Musgrave’s letters all to herself, undiscovered and undisturbed.

The squire never regained his strength or his perfect moral control, and the peculiar tempers of his previous life seemed to be exaggerated as his natural force decayed.  Mr. Oliver Smith was his most frequent and welcome visitor.  They talked together of events past and of friends long since dead.  Perhaps this was a little wearisome and painful now and then to Mr. Oliver Smith, who retained his youthful sprightliness amidst more serious sentiments.  He would have had his old friend contemplate the great future that was approaching, instead of the unalterable past.

One day he said to Bessie, “I think your grandfather wanders in his mind sometimes; I fear he is failing.”

“I don’t know,” was her reflective answer.  “His thoughts often run on his sister Dorothy and Lady Latimer:  I hear him mutter to himself the same words often, ‘It was a lifelong mistake, Olympia.’  But that is true, is it not?  He is as clear and collected as ever when he dictates to me a letter on business; he makes use of me as his secretary.”

“Well, well!  Let us hope, then, God may spare him to us for many years to come,” said Mr. Oliver Smith, with that conventional propriety of speech which helps us through so many hard moments when feeling does not dictate anything real to say.

Bessie dwelt for some days after on that pious aspiration of her grandfather’s old friend, but the ache and tedium of life did not return upon her.  Her sense of duty and natural affection were very strong.  She told herself that if it were her lot to watch for many years beside this dwindling flame, it was a lot of God’s giving, not of her own seeking, and therefore good.  The letters that came to her from Beechhurst and Caen breathed nothing but encouragement to love and patience, and Harry Musgrave’s letters were a perpetual fount of refreshment.  What delightful letters they were!  He told, her whatever he thought would interest or amuse her or make his life palpable to her.  He sent her books, he sent her proof-sheets to be read and returned:  if Bessie had not loved him so devotedly and all that belonged to him, she might have thought his literature a tax on her leisure.  It was a wonder to all who knew her (without knowing her secret fund of joy) what a cheerful countenance she wore through this dreary period of her youth.  Within the house she had no support but the old servants, and little change or variety from without.  Those