heiress. Nevertheless, she comprehended that her husband felt an uneasy
twinge at the idea that he was compelled to act hardly to the one whose
hopes he had supplanted. Lucretia's banishment from Laughton was a just
humiliation, but it humbled a generous heart to inflict the sentence.
Thus, on all accounts, the remembrance of Lucretia was painful and
unwelcome to the successor of Sir Miles. There was a silence; Lady Mary
pressed her husband's hand.

"It is strange," said he, giving vent to his thoughts at that tender sign
of sympathy in his feeling,--"strange that, after all, she did not marry
Mainwaring, but fixed her choice on that subtle Frenchman. But she has
settled abroad now, perhaps for life; a great relief to my mind. Yes,
let us never recur to her."

"Fortunately," said Lady Mary, with some hesitation, "she does not seem
to have created much interest here. The poor seldom name her to me, and
our neighbours only with surprise at her marriage. In another year she
will be forgotten!"

Mr. St. John sighed. Perhaps he felt how much more easily he had been
forgotten, were he the banished one, Lucretia the possessor! His light
nature, however, soon escaped from all thoughts and sources of annoyance,
and he listened with complacent attention to Lady Mary's gentle plans for
the poor, and the children's school, and the cottages that ought to be
repaired, and the labourers that ought to be employed. For though it may
seem singular, Vernon St. John, insensibly influenced by his wife's meek
superiority, and corrected by her pure companionship, had begun to feel
the charm of innocent occupations,--more, perhaps, than if he had been
accustomed to the larger and loftier excitements of life, and missed that
stir of intellect which is the element of those who have warred in the