’I am glad to know that he has you to look to, when his old grandmother is gone.’

‘Oh, don’t say—­’

‘I shall make way for you some day,’ said Mrs. Frost, caressing her.  ’You are leaving us, my dear.  It is quite right, and we will not murmur; but would not your mamma spare you to us for one evening?  Could you not come and drink tea with us, that we may know each other a little better?’

The stepmother’s affectionate assent, and even emotion, were a great surprise to Isabel; and James began to imagine that nothing was beyond Mrs. Frost’s power.

Louis saved James the trouble of driving him away by going to dine with Mr. Calcott, and the evening was happy, even beyond anticipation; the grandmother all affection, James all restless bliss, Isabel serene amid her blushes; and yet the conversation would not thrive, till Mrs. Frost took them out walking, and, when in the loneliest lane, conceived a wish to inquire the price of poultry at the nearest farm, and sent the others to walk on.  Long did she talk of the crops, discourse of the French and Bohemian enormities, and smilingly contradict reports that the young lord was to marry the young lady, before the lovers reappeared, without the most distant idea where they had been.

After that, they could not leave off talking; they took granny into their counsels, and she heard Isabel confess how the day-dream of her life had been to live among the ‘very good.’  She smiled with humble self-conviction of falling far beneath the standard, as she discovered that the enthusiastic girl had found all her aspirations for ‘goodness’ realized by Dynevor Terrace; and regarding it as peace, joy, and honour, to be linked with it.  The newly-found happiness, and the effort to be worthy of it, were to bear her through all uncongenial scenes; she had such a secret of joy that she should never repine again.

‘Ah!  Isabel, and what am I to do?’ said James.

‘You ask?’ she said, smiling.  ’You, who have Northwold for your home, and live in the atmosphere I only breathe now and then?’

‘Your presence is my atmosphere of life.’

’Mrs. Frost, tell him he must not talk so wrongly, so extravagantly, I mean.’

’It may be wrong; it is not extravagant.  It falls only too far short of my feeling!  What will the Terrace be without you?’

’It will not be without my thoughts.  How often I shall think I see the broad road, and the wide field, and the mountain-ash berries, that were reddening when we came; and the canary in the window!  How little my first glance at the houses took in what they would be to me!’

And then they had to settle the haunts she was to revisit at Beauchastel.  An invitation thither was the ostensible cause of the rapid break-up from the House Beautiful; but the truth was not so veiled but that there were many surmises among the uninitiated.  Jane had caught something from my young Lord’s demeanour which certified her, and made her so exceedingly proud and grand, that, though she was too honourable to breathe a word of her discovery, she walked with her kind old head three inches higher; and, as a great favour, showed Charlotte a piece of poor dear Master Henry’s bridecake, kept for luck, and a little roll of treasured real Brussels lace, that she had saved to adorn her cap whenever Mr. James should marry.