lodgings, sometimes were left at his manor-house of Milthorpe; but the
last two years of his life were very uneasy to him and to us.

For when the young king, Charles the Second, was brought in again, five
years agone, our father was drawn up to Court by some I will not name,
who tempted him with hopes of preferments and rewards to recompense his
loyalty. He wasted his means much through the ill counsel of these false
friends, but obtained no fruit of their promises, and at last he died
suddenly; whether broken-hearted or not I leave to the judgment of God,
and to the consciences of the men who for their own ends had betrayed
him into those vain expectations. At that time Althea was barely
nineteen, and I a little past sixteen; we had no brother nor other
sister.

We were then at Milthorpe; and thither our father was brought to be
buried. That was a black time for us. Though lately we had been kept
apart from our father, we loved him dearly, and we knew of no other
friend and protector. And when the funeral was over we could not tell
which way to turn; for we found our father's land must needs pass to the
next male heir, Mr. John Dacre, our distant cousin. He, I know not how,
had contrived to thrive where our father had decayed, and had gotten a
good share of favour at the new Court.

My memory offers things past to me as if in separate pictures, this and
that accident that befell us showing much more clear and bright than
things quite as important which lie between. I remember but dimly all
the sad time of our father's death and burial, the grief I myself felt,
and all the bustle and stir about us, making those days cloudy to me;
but all the more plainly I remember a certain day that followed the
funeral, when Althea and I were sitting together in a little parlour