So I remained with my dear girl, and life at Thornleigh Manor glided by in a quiet melancholy fashion.  If Mrs. Darrell grieved for her dead husband, her sorrow was of a cold tearless kind; but she kept her own rooms a good deal, and we did not see much of her.  The Collingwoods were full of sympathy for their ‘darling Milly,’ and their affection had some cheering influence upon her mind.  From them she heard occasionally of Mr. Egerton, who was travelling in the wildest regions of Northern Europe.  She very rarely spoke of him herself at this time; and once when I mentioned his name she checked me reproachfully.

‘Don’t speak about him, Mary,’ she said; ’I don’t want to think of him.  It seems like a kind of treason against papa.  It seems like taking advantage of my dear father’s death.’

’Would you refuse to marry him, Milly, if he were to come back to you, now that you are your own mistress?’

’I don’t know that, dear.  I think I love him too much to do that.  And yet it would seem like a sin against my father.’

The spring months passed, and Milly brightened a little as the days went by.  She spent a deal of time amongst the poor; and I think her devotion to that duty helped her to put aside her sorrow more than anything else could have done.  I was always with her, sharing in all her work; and I do not believe she had a thought hidden from me at this time.

Mrs. Darrell had not gone abroad yet.  She lived a useless, listless life, doing nothing, and caring for nothing, as it seemed.  More than once she made preparations for her departure, and then changed her mind at the last moment.

Late in June we heard of Mr. Egerton’s return to Cumber; and a few days after that he came to Thornleigh.  Mrs. Darrell was in her own room, Milly and I alone in the drawing-room, when he called.  My poor girl turned very pale, and the tears came into her eyes as she and Angus Egerton met.  He spoke of her loss with extreme delicacy, and was full of tender sympathy.  He had news to tell her of himself.  A distant relation of his mother’s had died lately, leaving him six thousand a year.  He had come back to restore Cumber to its old splendour, and to take his proper place in the county.

While they were talking together in low confidential tones, not at all embarrassed by my presence, Mrs. Darrell came into the room.  She was paler than usual; but there was an animation in her face that had not been there for a long time.  She received Mr. Egerton very graciously, and insisted upon his staying to dinner.

The evening passed very pleasantly.  I had never seen Augusta Darrell so agreeable, so fascinating, as she was that night.  She touched the piano for the first time since her husband’s death, and sang and played with all her old fire, keeping Angus Egerton a prisoner by the side of the piano.  Hers was not music to be heard with indifference by the coldest ear.