a name connected only with blast-furnaces, would have made a distinct fall in the tone of Wanley society.  Fortunately no changes were made in the structure by its new owner.  Not far from it you see the church and the vicarage, these also unmolested in their quiet age.  Wanley, it is to be feared, lags far behind the times—­painfully so, when one knows for a certainty that the valley upon which it looks conceals treasures of coal, of ironstone—­blackband, to be technical—­and of fireclay.  Some ten years ago it seemed as if better things were in store; there was a chance that the vale might for ever cast off its foolish greenery, and begin vomiting smoke and flames in humble imitation of its metropolis beyond the hills.  There are men in Belwick who have an angry feeling whenever Wanley is mentioned to them.

After the inhabitants of the Manor, the most respected of those who dwelt in Wanley were the Walthams.  At the time of which I speak, this family consisted of a middle-aged lady; her son, of one-and-twenty; and her daughter, just eighteen.  They had resided here for little more than two years, but a gentility which marked their speech and demeanour, and the fact that they were well acquainted with the Eldons, from the first caused them to be looked up to.  It was conjectured, and soon confirmed by Mrs. Waltham’s own admissions, that they had known a larger way of living than that to which they adapted themselves in the little house on the side of Stanbury Hill, whence they looked over the village street.  Mr. Waltham had, in fact, been a junior partner in a Belwick firm, which came to grief.  He saved enough out of the wreck to:  make a modest competency for his family, and would doubtless in time have retrieved his fortune, but death was beforehand with him.  His wife, in the second year of her widowhood, came with her daughter Adela to Wanley; her son Alfred had gone to commercial work in Belwick.  Mrs. Waltham was a prudent woman, and tenacious of ideas which recommended themselves to her practical instincts; such an idea had much to do with her settlement in the remote village, which she would not have chosen for her abode out of love of its old-world quietness.  But at the Manor was Hubert Eldon.  Hubert was four years older than Adela.  He had no fortune of his own, but it was tolerably certain that some day he would be enormously rich, and there was small likelihood that he would marry till that expected change in his position came about.

On the afternoon of a certain Good Friday, Mrs. Waltham sat at her open window, enjoying the air and busy with many thoughts, among other things wondering who was likely to drop in for a cup of tea.  It was a late Easter, and warm spring weather had already clothed the valley with greenness; to-day the sun was almost hot, and the west wind brought many a sweet odour from gardens near and far.  From her sitting-room Mrs. Waltham had the best view to be obtained from any house in Wanley; she looked, as I have said, right