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"And I fear that Bannisdale is not a very gay place for a young lady visitor?" He smiled. And so did she; though his tone, with its shade of proud humility, embarrassed her. "It is as beautiful as a dream!" she said, with sudden energy, throwing up her little hand. And he turned to look, as she was looking, at the river and the woods. "You feel the beauty of it so much?" he asked her, wondering.

She recalled the incident of the land, and that cold isolation in which Helbeck held himself towards his Protestant neighbours the passionate animosity with which he would sometimes speak of their charities or their pietisms, the contempt he had for almost all their ideals, national or social. Again and again, in the early days at Bannisdale, it had ruffled or provoked her.

She was no more tormented with anxieties; and she moved again with personal ease and comfort about her old home. Poor Alan of course felt it dreadfully. And Laura could not come to Bannisdale for a long, long time. But Mrs. Fountain could go to her several times a year. And the Sisters were very good, and chatty. Oh no, it was best much best!

It was Hubert, no doubt Hubert in pursuit, and calling to her, lest she should come unawares upon the danger spots that marked the sands. She stood and watched the moving speck till it was lost in a band of shadow. Then she saw it no more, and the cries ceased. Would he be at Bannisdale before she was? She dashed away her tears, and smiled. Ah! Let him seek her there! let him herald her.

She did not again express herself except rarely to Augustina with the vehemence she had shown to the little lame orphan; she was quite ready to chat and laugh upon occasion with Father Leadham, who had a pleasant wit, and now and then deliberately sought her society; and, owing to the feebleness of Augustina, she, quite unconsciously, established certain household ways which spoke the woman, and were new to Bannisdale.

Helbeck to Father Leadham on the subject of a ghost story that had sprung up during the Squire's memory in connection with the park and the house a quite modern story, according to Helbeck, turning on the common motive of a gypsy woman and her curse, started some forty years before this date, with a local success not a little offensive, apparently, to the owner of Bannisdale.

Hence these preposterous sermons in the fell chapel; this eager nosing out and tracking down of every scent of Popery; this fanatical satisfaction in such a kindred soul as that of Elizabeth Mason. Some mild Ritualism at Whinthorpe had given him occupation for years; and as for Bannisdale, he and the Masons between them had raised the most causeless of storms about Mr.

Our part in these matters is obedience, not speculation." In faint pencil on the margin was written: "My Stephen could not believe. Mary pray " The book contained the Bannisdale book-plate, and the name "Alan Helbeck." Laura threw it down. But her face trembled through its scorn, and she finished what she was doing in a kind of blind passion.

Helbeck's exertions, which lay half-way between Bannisdale and Whinthorpe. They had not long arrived, and were now waiting for Rosary and Benediction in the chapel before they were admitted to the tea which Mrs. Denton and Augustina had already spread for them in the big hall. At sight of the children Helbeck's face lit up and his step quickened.

That night for the first time since her arrival at Bannisdale, Laura, instead of saying good-night as soon as the clock reached a quarter to ten, quietly walked beside Augustina to the chapel. She knelt at some distance from Helbeck. But when the prayers, which were read by Mr. Williams, were over, and the tiny congregation was leaving the chapel, she felt herself drawn back.