I am engaged in writing a historical romance—­indeed, it is principally to examine the localities in the country where my story is laid, that I have been abroad.  Clara has read the first half-dozen finished chapters, in manuscript, and augurs wonderful success for my fiction when it is published.  She is determined to arrange my study with her own hands; to dust my books, and sort my papers herself.  She knows that I am already as fretful and precise about my literary goods and chattels, as indignant at any interference of housemaids and dusters with my library treasures, as if I were a veteran author of twenty years’ standing; and she is resolved to spare me every apprehension on this score, by taking all the arrangements of my study on herself, and keeping the key of the door when I am not in need of it.

We have our London amusements, too, as well as our London employments.  But the pleasantest of our relaxations are, after all, procured for us by our horses.  We ride every day—­sometimes with friends, sometimes alone together.  On these latter occasions, we generally turn our horses’ heads away from the parks, and seek what country sights we can get in the neighbourhood of London.  The northern roads are generally our favourite ride.

Sometimes we penetrate so far that we can bait our horses at a little inn which reminds me of the inns near our country home.  I see the same sanded parlour, decorated with the same old sporting prints, furnished with the same battered, deep-coloured mahogany table, and polished elm tree chairs, that I remember in our own village inn.  Clara, also, finds bits of common, out of doors, that look like our common; and trees that might have been transplanted expressly for her, from our park.

These excursions we keep a secret, we like to enjoy them entirely by ourselves.  Besides, if my father knew that his daughter was drinking the landlady’s fresh milk, and his son the landlord’s old ale, in the parlour of a suburban roadside inn, he would, I believe, be apt to suspect that both his children had fairly taken leave of their senses.

Evening parties I frequent almost as rarely as my father.  Clara’s good nature is called into requisition to do duty for me, as well as for him.  She has little respite in the task.  Old lady relatives and friends, always ready to take care of her, leave her no excuse for staying at home.  Sometimes I am shamed into accompanying her a little more frequently than usual; but my old indolence in these matters soon possesses me again.  I have contracted a bad habit of writing at night—­I read almost incessantly in the day time.  It is only because I am fond of riding, that I am ever willing to interrupt my studies, and ever ready to go out at all.

Such were my domestic habits, such my regular occupations and amusements, when a mere accident changed every purpose of my life, and altered me irretrievably from what I was then, to what I am now.