’Ah! my child, I am afraid the tempers are a part of your physical constitution,’ he returned, mournfully.

‘You mean that I am like you, papa,’ said Sophy.  ’I think I might at least learn to be really like you, and if I must feel miserable, not to be unkind and sulky!  And then I should leave off even the being unhappy about nothing.’

Her eyes brightened, but her father shook his head sadly, and said, ’You would not be like me, my dear, if depression never made you selfish.  But,’ he added, with an effort, ’you will not suffer so much from low spirits when you are in better health, and able to move about.’

‘Oh, no!’ exclaimed Sophy; ’I often feel so sick of lying here, that I feel as if I never could be sulky if only I might walk about, and go from one room to another when I please!  But papa, you will let me be admitted into the Church when I am able, will you not?’

‘It shall be well weighed, Sophy.’

Sophy knew her father too well, and had too much reticence to say any more.  He was certainly meditating deeply, and reading too, indeed he would almost have appeared to have a fit of the study, but for little Maurice, a tyrannical little gentleman, who domineered over the entire household, and would have been grievously spoilt, if his mother had not taken all the crossing the stout little will upon herself.  He had a gallant pair of legs, and the disposition of a young Centaur, he seemed to divide the world into things that could be ridden on, and that could not; and when he bounced at the study door, with ‘Papa! gee! gee!’ and lifted up his round, rosy face, and despotic blue eyes, Mr. Kendal’s foot was at his service, and the study was brown no longer.

The result of Mr. Kendal’s meditations was an invitation to his wife to drive with him to Fairmead.

That was a most enjoyable drive, the weather too hot and sunny, perhaps, for Albinia’s preferences, but thoroughly penetrating, and giving energy to, her East-Indian husband, and making the whole country radiant with sunny beauty—­the waving hay-fields falling before the mower’s scythe, the ranks of hay-makers tossing the fragrant grass, the growing corn softly waving in the summer breeze, the river blue with reflected sky, the hedges glowing with stately fox-gloves, or with blushing wreaths of eglantine.  And how cool, fresh, and fair was the beech-avenue at Fairmead.

Yet though Albinia came to it with the fond tenderness of old association, it was not with the regretful clinging of the first visit, when it seemed to her the natural home to which she still really belonged.  Nor had she the least thought about producing an impression of her own happiness, and scarcely any whether ‘Edmund’ would be amused and at ease, though knowing he had a stranger to encounter in the person of Winifred’s sister, Mary Reid.