CHAPTER II.



AN OLD SCHOOLMISTRESS.



I praise thee, matron, and thy due
Is praise, heroic praise and true;
With admiration I behold
Thy gladness unsubdued and bold.
Thy looks and gestures all present
The picture of a life well spent;
Our human nature throws away
Its second twilight and looks gay.
WORDSWORTH.


Unconscious of Charlotte's flight and Tom's affront, the Earl of
Ormersfield rode along Dynevor Terrace--a row of houses with handsome
cemented fronts, tragic and comic masks alternating over the
downstairs windows, and the centre of the block adorned with a
pediment and colonnade; but there was an air as if something ailed
the place: the gardens were weedy, the glass doors hazy, the cement
stained and scarred, and many of the windows closed and dark, like
eyes wanting speculation, or with merely the dreary words 'To be let'
enlivening their blank gloom. At the house where Charlotte had