It would seem something a matter for a wonder that a lady of Miss Royston’s refinement¹ and varied² capacity for ideals should be content to lead so long an annual series of her days to a pastoral retirement³. A month in London about the chill opening of the year, and another, later, at Epsom, Tunbridge Wells, or, perhaps, Newmarket, would comprise the wonted period of her absence from “Chatters.” This may have been so according to choice or necessity; but it was probably dictated⁴ by the first in greatest degree. It is true her brother’s smug, good-humoured little face misexpressed a character very fairly endowed with determination. He was, and desired to be, a country squire⁵; and, though he subscribed⁶ with infinite complacency to the extremest fashions of the town, it was only that he might thereby⁷ hold his neighbours to the right quantity of respect in alluding⁸ to his position amongst them. He would figure in their eyes, no Will Levett with a cudgel for Assembly Rooms, and still less a London fribble sporting with squirearchy; but a courteous⁹ lord of acres who should exemplify the best characteristics of both and the exaggerations of neither.

 

But his heart was with the country, and therefore it might be supposed that Miss Angela, in her rustic¹⁰ retirement, made a cloisteral virtue¹¹ of necessity. It might be, and wrongfully, I believe. For this young lady’s tastes held much in common with those of her brother, enjoying different interests, but adapted to similar conditions. Perhaps she found a world of trees and flowers most fitting to her many excursions in romance. Perhaps she preferred conducting her own chorus of praise at “Chatters” to playing upon heart-

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