half-deserted corner of this earth, in which a man, tired of the press
and turmoil of the world, might find an almost monastic solitude and
calm.

So thought a gentleman in the Squire's pew--a good-looking man of about
thirty, who was finishing his first Sunday at Lidford by devout
attendance at evening service. He had been thinking a good deal about
this quiet country life during the service, wondering whether it was not
the best life a man could live, after all, and thinking it all the
sweeter because of his own experience, which had lain chiefly in cities.

He was a certain Mr. Gilbert Fenton, an Australian merchant, and was on a
visit to his sister, who had married the principal landowner in Lidford,
Martin Lister--a man whose father had been called "the Squire." The lady
sat opposite her brother in the wide old family pew to-night--a
handsome-looking matron, with a little rosy-cheeked damsel sitting by her
side--a damsel with flowing auburn hair, tiny hat and feather, and bright
scarlet stockings, looking very much as if she had walked out of a picture
by Mr. Millais.

The congregation stood up to sing a hymn when the sermon was ended, and
Gilbert Fenton turned his face towards the opposite line of pews, in one of
which, very near him, there was a girl, at whom Mrs. Lister had caught her
brother looking very often, during the service just concluded.

It was a face that a man could scarcely look upon once without finding
his glances wandering back to it afterwards; not quite a perfect face,
but a very bright and winning one. Large gray eyes, with a wonderful
light in them, under dark lashes and darker brows; a complexion that had
a dusky pallor, a delicate semi-transparent olive-tint that one seldom