to her kind friends for all they had done to further her happiness, and
looked forward to the time when she should meet her affianced husband
with intense satisfaction and delight. She would not now be called upon
to return to India, to which country she had a strong aversion; and well
she might, for her residence there, with the exception of her episodes
of pleasure derived from the society of Arthur, had indeed been very
trying.

It was summer, bright, glorious, balmy summer. The birds sang and
chirped among the green leaves, and wood pigeons cooed in the hollow
trunks of the trees, beneath whose outspreading branches, little
four-footed creatures gamboled and made merry among the soft feathery
grasses that grew in the fine old beech woods of Devon. It was pleasant
to listen to the cool, gurgling sound of the brawling brook, whose
bright waters skipped, danced and glittered, as they forced their way
over the pebbles and other impediments in their serpentine course along
the shady dell that skirted the Home Park, wherein, under the venerable
oaks, the red and fallow deer rested, dreamily sniffing the delicious
fragrance that pervaded the air, borne upon the light summer wind from
the rich parterre which stretched the entire length of the south wing at
Vellenaux.

In a large octagon-shaped apartment that had been fitted up as a
library, the most pleasing feature of which was its Southern aspect,
were seated _tete a tete_ two personages, who figured somewhat
conspicuously in the early part of our story, these were Mrs. Fraudhurst
and Sir Ralph Coleman. They had met here at the request of the Baronet,
for Sir Ralph and the widow rarely met except by appointment or at the
dinner table.