She was very handsome, and wonderfully like her son.  I could fancy those two haughty spirits in opposition.

We spent another hour looking over the rest of the house—­old tapestry, old pictures, old china, old furniture, secret staircases, carved chimneypieces, muniment chests, and the usual objects of interest to be found in such a place.  After that we walked a little in the neglected garden, where there were old holly hedges that had grown high and wild for want of clipping, and where a curious old sun-dial had fallen down upon the grass in a forlorn way.  The paths were all green and moss-grown, and the roses were almost choked with bindweed.  I saw Mrs. Darrell gather one of these roses and put it in her breast.  It was the first time I have ever seen her pluck a flower, though there was a wealth of roses at Thornleigh.

So ended our visit to Cumber Priory; a place that was destined to be very memorable to some of us in the time to come.

CHAPTER IV.

MRS. THATCHER.

It had been Milly’s habit to devote one day a week to visiting among the poor, before she went to Albury Lodge; and she now resumed this practice, I accompanying her upon her visits.  I had been used to going about among the cottagers at home, and I liked the work.  It was very pleasant to see Milly Darrell with these people—­the perfect confidence and sympathy between them and her, the delight they seemed to take in her bright cheering presence.  I was struck by their simple natural manner, and the absence of anything like sycophancy to be observed in them.  One day, when we had been to several cottages about the village, Milly asked me if I could manage rather a long walk; and on my telling her that I could, we started upon a lonely road that wound across the moor in a direction I had never walked in until that day.  We went on for about two miles without passing a human habitation, and then came to one of the most desolate-looking cottages I ever remember seeing.  It was little better than a cabin, and consisted only of two rooms—­a kind of kitchen or dwelling-room, and a dark little bedchamber opening out of it.

‘I am not going to introduce you to a very agreeable person, Mary,’ Milly said, when we were within a few paces of this solitary dwelling; ’but old Rebecca is a character in her way, and I make a point of coming to see her now and then, though she is not always very gracious to me.’

It was a warm bright summer’s day, but the door and the single window of the cottage were firmly closed.  Milly knocked with her hand, and a thin feeble old voice called to her to ‘come in.’

We went in:  the atmosphere of the place was hot, and had an unpleasant doctor’s-shoppish kind of odour, which I found was caused by some herbs in a jar that was simmering over a little stove in a corner.  Bunches of dried herbs hung from the low ceiling, and on an old-fashioned lumbering chest of drawers that stood in the window there were more herbs and roots laid out to dry.