By sweet experience know
That marriage, rightly understood,
Gives to the tender and the good
A paradise below."
--Cotton


Mr. Allison had fully kept his promise to Sophie, and Ashlands was again
the fine old place it had been prior to the war. The family, consisting
of the elder Mrs. Carrington, a young man, named George Boyd, a nephew
of hers who had taken charge of the plantation, Sophie and her four
children, had now been in possession for over a year.

Sophie, still an almost inconsolable mourner for the husband of her
youth, lived a very retired life, devoting herself to his mother and his
orphaned little ones.

Mrs. Ross, expecting to spend the fall and winter with them, had brought
all her children and a governess, Miss Fisk, who undertook the tuition
of the little Carringtons also during her stay at Ashlands, thus leaving
the mothers more at liberty for the enjoyment of each other's society.

It was in the midst of school-hours that the Ion carriage came driving
up the avenue, and Philip Ross, lifting his head from the slate over
which he had been bending for the last half hour, rose hastily, threw
down his pencil and hurried from the room, paying no attention to Miss
Fisk's query, "Where are you going, Philip?" or her command, "Come back
instantly: it is quite contrary to rules for pupils to leave the
school-room during the hours of recitation, without permission." Indeed
he had reached the foot of the staircase before the last word had left