The magic of the weather brought numerous butterflies afield, and one fiddler, to whose tuning the little women danced; others closer upon womanhood would have danced likewise, if the sisters had taken partners; but Dahlia was restrained by the sudden consciousness that she was under the immediate observation of two manifestly London gentlemen, and she declined to be led forth by Robert Armstrong.  The intruders were youths of good countenance, known to be the son and the nephew of Squire Blancove of Wrexby Hall.  They remained for some time watching the scene, and destroyed Dahlia’s single-mindedness.  Like many days of gaiety, the Gods consenting, this one had its human shadow.  There appeared on the borders of the festivity a young woman, the daughter of a Wrexby cottager, who had left her home and but lately returned to it, with a spotted name.  No one addressed her, and she stood humbly apart.  Dahlia, seeing that every one moved away from her, whispering with satisfied noddings, wished to draw her in among the groups.  She mentioned the name of Mary Burt to her father, supposing that so kind a man would not fail to sanction her going up to the neglected young woman.  To her surprise, her father became violently enraged, and uttered a stern prohibition, speaking a word that stained her cheeks.  Rhoda was by her side, and she wilfully, without asking leave, went straight over to Mary, and stood with her under the shadow of the Adam and Eve, until the farmer sent a messenger to say that he was about to enter the house.  Her punishment for the act of sinfulness was a week of severe silence; and the farmer would have kept her to it longer, but for her mother’s ominously growing weakness.  The sisters were strangely overclouded by this incident.  They could not fathom the meaning of their father’s unkindness, coarseness, and indignation.  Why, and why? they asked one another, blankly.  The Scriptures were harsh in one part, but was the teaching to continue so after the Atonement?  By degrees they came to reflect, and not in a mild spirit, that the kindest of men can be cruel, and will forget their Christianity toward offending and repentant women.

CHAPTER II

Mrs. Fleming had a brother in London, who had run away from his Kentish home when a small boy, and found refuge at a Bank.  The position of Anthony Hackbut in that celebrated establishment, and the degree of influence exercised by him there, were things unknown; but he had stuck to the Bank for a great number of years, and he had once confessed to his sister that he was not a beggar.  Upon these joint facts the farmer speculated, deducing from them that a man in a London Bank, holding money of his own, must have learnt the ways of turning it over—­farming golden ground, as it were; consequently, that amount must now have increased to a very considerable sum.  You ask, What amount?  But one who sits brooding upon a pair of facts for years, with the imperturbable