back to the old house, on glancing round its mildewed walls,
comfortless and bare, the neglected, weed-grown garden, Sibyll had
shuddered in dismay. Had her ambition fallen again into its old
abject state? Were all her hopes to restore her ancestral fortunes,
to vindicate her dear father's fame, shrunk into this slough of actual
poverty,--the butterfly's wings folded back into the chrysalis shroud
of torpor? The vast disparity between herself and Hastings had not
struck her so forcibly at the court; here, at home, the very walls
proclaimed it. When Edward had dismissed the unwelcome witnesses of
his attempted crime, he had given orders that they should be conducted
to their house through the most private ways. He naturally desired to
create no curious comment upon their departure. Unperceived by their
neighbours, Sibyll and her father had gained access by the garden
gate. Old Madge received them in dismay; for she had been in the
habit of visiting Sibyll weekly at the palace, and had gained, in the
old familiarity subsisting, then, between maiden and nurse, some
insight into her heart. She had cherished the fondest hopes for the
fate of her young mistress; and now, to labour and to penury had the
fate returned! The guard who accompanied them, according to Edward's
orders, left some pieces of gold, which Adam rejected, but Madge
secretly received and judiciously expended. And this was all their
wealth. But not of toil nor of penury in themselves thought Sibyll;
she thought but of Hastings,--wildly, passionately, trustfully,
unceasingly, of the absent Hastings. Oh, he would seek her, he would
come, her reverse would but the more endear her to him! Hastings came
not. She soon learned the wherefore. War threatened the land,--he
was at his post, at the head of armies.

Oh, with what panoply of prayer she sought to shield that beloved
breast! And now the old man spoke of the blessed spring, the holiday