column that formed its apex, till they were out of sight.

A long time elapsed before that lady drove over the hill again. It
was February; the soil was now unquestionably dry, the weather and
scene being in other respects much as they had been before. The
familiar shape of the column seemed to remind her that at last an
opportunity for a close inspection had arrived. Giving her
directions she saw the gate opened, and after a little manoeuvring
the carriage swayed slowly into the uneven field.

Although the pillar stood upon the hereditary estate of her husband
the lady had never visited it, owing to its insulation by this well-
nigh impracticable ground. The drive to the base of the hill was
tedious and jerky, and on reaching it she alighted, directing that
the carriage should be driven back empty over the clods, to wait for
her on the nearest edge of the field. She then ascended beneath the
trees on foot.

The column now showed itself as a much more important erection than
it had appeared from the road, or the park, or the windows of
Welland House, her residence hard by, whence she had surveyed it
hundreds of times without ever feeling a sufficient interest in its
details to investigate them. The column had been erected in the
last century, as a substantial memorial of her husband's great-
grandfather, a respectable officer who had fallen in the American
war, and the reason of her lack of interest was partly owing to her
relations with this husband, of which more anon. It was little
beyond the sheer desire for something to do--the chronic desire of
her curiously lonely life--that had brought her here now. She was
in a mood to welcome anything that would in some measure disperse an