Meanwhile, on leaving Helen, Burley strode on; and, as if by some better
instinct, for he was unconscious of his own steps, he took his way
towards the still green haunts of his youth. When he paused at length,
he was already before the door of a rural cottage, standing alone in the
midst of fields, with a little farmyard at the back; and far through the
trees in front was caught a glimpse of the winding Brent.

With this cottage Burley was familiar; it was inhabited by a good old
couple who had known him from a boy. There he habitually left his rods
and fishing-tackle; there, for intervals in his turbid, riotous life, he
had sojourned for two or three days together, fancying the first day that
the country was a heaven, and convinced before the third that it was a
purgatory.

An old woman, of neat and tidy exterior, came forth to greet him.

"Ah, Master John," said she, clasping his nerveless hand, "well, the
fields be pleasant now; I hope you are come to stay a bit? Do; it will
freshen you; you lose all the fine colour you had once, in Lunnon town."

"I will stay with you, my kind friend," said Burley, with unusual
meekness; "I can have the old room, then?"

"Oh, yes, come and look at it. I never let it now to any one but you,
--never have let it since the dear beautiful lady with the angel's face
went away. Poor thing, what could have become of her?"

Thus speaking, while Burley listened not, the old woman drew him within
the cottage, and led him up the stairs into a room that might have well