new year's day; but this, it was evident, would not have satisfied
their masters, who were scrupulous in insisting that whatever
advantage there was should always fall on the side of the younger
men.

When Philip saw Sylvia she was always quiet and gentle; perhaps more
silent than she had been a year ago, and she did not attend so
briskly to what was passing around her. She was rather thinner and
paler; but whatever change there was in her was always an
improvement in Philip's eyes, so long as she spoke graciously to
him. He thought she was suffering from long-continued anxiety about
her mother, or that she had too much to do; and either cause was
enough to make him treat her with a grave regard and deference which
had a repressed tenderness in it, of which she, otherwise occupied,
was quite unaware. She liked him better, too, than she had done a
year or two before, because he did not show her any of the eager
attention which teased her then, although its meaning was not fully
understood.

Things were much in this state when the frost broke, and milder
weather succeeded. This was the time so long looked forward to by
the invalid and her friends, as favouring the doctor's
recommendation of change of air. Her husband was to take her to
spend a fortnight with a kindly neighbour, who lived near the farm
they had occupied, forty miles or so inland, before they came to
Haytersbank. The widow-woman was to come and stay in the house, to
keep Sylvia company, during her mother's absence. Daniel, indeed,
was to return home after conveying his wife to her destination; but
there was so much to be done on the land at this time of the year,
that Sylvia would have been alone all day had it not been for the