ughters, had lived for several years abroad, finding society more accessible, and consequently, the matrimonial chances of the "Petersham girls" proportionately great

od houses to know that a house without a mistress is no house at all. Accordingly, in a very few days the house felt her pre

he first Sunday after her arrival, she drove to church, and occupied the great old family pew, to the immense astonishment of the rustics, and, after afternoon service, caught up the old vicar in her imperious off-hand way, and will he nil he, carried him off to dinner-at which meal he was horrified to find himself sitting with two shaven priests, who talked Latin and crossed themselves. His embarrassment was gr

then that she might put down with a high hand any, even the most distant, approach to a tangible impertinence. But she was no match for him in the arts of petty, delicate, galling annoyances. There he was her master; he had been brought up in a good school for that, and had learnt his lesson kindly. He found that she disliked his presence, and shrunk from his smooth, lean face with unutterable dis

after the marriage, Mackworth appeared in Cliffor

ford, who never neglected reli

er rudely, and then relapsed into silence. Father

friend, I am getting sick of

Ro

with contemptuous insolence when they were alone. "What is the use of staying here, fighting th

so?" said

a career worthy of me; then I should have a chance of deserving well of the Church, by keeping a wavering family in her bosom. And I

and started. Mackworth at the same time turned s

d man; "what makes

y I have never been easy since you told

t ever since," said Cli

o to Rome. I'd sooner be gossiping with Alphonse and Pierre in

a pleasant seat a short distance off invited him to sit. He could get a book he knew from the drawing-room, and s

eyond, separated from the room he was in by a partly-drawn curtain. T

es of a deeply mullioned window, fell upon two persons, at the sight of whom he paused, and

ent, the coldest pair, he had ever seen. But now! now, the haughty beauty was bending from her chair over her husband, who sat on a stool at her fe

a-birds on the cliffs, the nightingale in the wood; they fell upon his ear, but he cou

a voice that even he, whose attention was strained

ou this one, but mind, the rest are min

," said Densil, an

u could get rid of that priest, th

y my mother," was Densil's reply. "If you

tible for me to annoy myself about. But I distru

eeable," said Densil; "

having heard enough, but wa

t that impudent girl Norah has been

tened more int

?" aske

s, your

on, Susan, when they all left me. She is a fine, faith

stole gently away through the gloomy room, a

ok up the conversation ju

my brother, do you pro

l," was the satisfactory repl

was brought up in the Romish faith, and at five years old had just begun to learn his prayers of Father Clifford, when an event o