Ꮋ Ꭼ Ꭺ Ꭱ Ꭲ Ꮪ ;

OR, ENGLAND A HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

CHAPTER I.

Containing Squire Giffard's reason for marrying; and relating the manner in which his daughter, Honoria, learned what was meant by the threa that she would soon have her nose put out of joint.

HEARTS is an odd name for an estate, and Squire Giffard knew no more why his manor was called so than you do, and cared as little.

The one thing that troubled the Squire was, that he had no son to inherit the fertile lands that had passed in the direct line through so many generations; and that it seemed doubly hard that when he had married late in life for no other end or object than to beget an heir, he should have plagued himself with a wife for nothing.

For he counted as nothing the birth of a daughter; and when, instead of being told that both mother and child were doing well, he was requested by the surgeon to send upstairs the parson of the parish, who happened to be dining with him-although the meal was waiting to be served-the Squire's anger reached its climax as he saw his dinner growing colder and colder, and his wrath found vent in a series of imprecations. So that when his wife sought to propitiate him by sending her own woman to know by what name the weak infant should be half baptised, and to express her humble desire, if it should be agreeable to him, that his child should be called Honoria, after the respected lady, his late most honoured mother, the Squire bade the serving-woman tell her mistress "that one name was as good as another, and she might call it any name she pleased, 'twas all one to him, and did not matter a rush !"

Then he sat sulkily down to table by himself, and ate his beef and drank his ale; growling all the time, and cursing the parson's impudence in taking the liberty of leaving the room before the pudding was brought up.

The surgeon's fears came to naught: and when, in due time, the Squire's wife, with her nurse and baby, proceeded downstairs in a sort of triumphal procession, which had first been formed in the story above, to avert some misfortune otherwise certain to happen, the poor lady soon found that her husband had fallen into all his old-bachelor habits again,—that he drank as deeply, swore

as roundly, and rode to hounds, coursed or shot, according to the season of the year, just as eagerly as ever. He had been so attentive and complaisant to her whims for some months before her illness, that she felt his neglect the more keenly; but she dared not complain.

Several years passed in musing, praying, spinning, sewing, pickling, and preserving, after the praiseworthy fashion set by ladies of her station at the period-that is to say, more than a hundred years ago. And by the time that the little Honoria, who was as beautiful as a cherub, had beea fondled by her mother and flattered by her attendants until she had become the most troublesome, self-willed, ill-conditioned little brat that ever torped a house out of windows, the spoilt urchin heard it whispered, first by ore, and then by another of the upper servants, that nurse was likely to find somebody in the parsley-bed who would soon put missy's nose out of joint. It was an awful threat-all be more terrible from the mystery overhanging the mode of its fa'' peot.

"I don't believe a word of it!" sobbed the child, who had heard the prediction for the twentieth time, and was too proud to confess the misgivings which had driven her, over and over again, into the kitchen garden, to keep watch and ward over the quarter from which the enemy was expected to appear.

One morning, Honoria missed her mamma at the breakfasttable, and when she would have looked for her in ber bedchamber, madame's own maid came out of the ante-room, held the child forcibly back, and carried her downstairs, kicking and scratching, and screaming at the very top of her shrill voice, until the poor sick lady, who lay above, half dead from pain and exhaustion, felt her head aching distractedly.

There are some children-and Honoria was one of them-who, if they have a desire to do a forbidden thing, will do it first or last, however sharply they may be looked after.

She was told, from that morning, that she must on no account go near her mamma's room, or make any noise on the stairs; for that if she did, she would be a bad, naughty little girl, and the black man would come and pop her into his bag.

Had anyone told her the truth, she would have moved about on tiptoe, and hardly spoken above her breath when near Mrs. Giffard's chamber; as it was, she grew certain that, in spite of the bright look-out she had kept day by day over the sweet-berbs in the sunny border under the south wall of the kitchen garden, the dreaded stranger had been smuggled into the house at sometime or ther, probably in the night, and she got upon a chair, whenever she could do so unobserved, in order to peep at her face in the looking-glass, and make quite sure that her nose was still in the right place,

Day by day there was a sense of strangeness in all the sayings and doings that were taking place before her that fell coldly upon her little heart, she knew not why.

In the first place, the great rambling old place had never been so quiet since she was born. Not a sound rose from the lower regions. No one seemed ever to laugh either in kitchen or butlery. Let the solitary child creep into which room she would, she found the blinds all down, and the chairs set against the walls in undisturbed order, and an oppressive stillness seemed to rest upon the air from the windows being kept closed.

The silence was terrible.

She missed the baying of her father's old hound, and, although its continual howling had for many weeks been a doleful sound in her ears by night as well as by day, she burst out crying when she was told the Squire had caused it to be shot.

Then madame's own woman kissed her in a pitiful fashion that was new to her, and bid her be a good little maid and not spoil her eyes, but come and see what a pretty bed had been put up for her in a room close to her own; and, try as often as she might to find ber way into her mamma's chamber, some one was sure to pounce upon the poor child, take her by the hand, and lead her in another direction.

No one teazed her any longer about the little stranger, and she was too sensitive on the subject to betray the importance she attached to it. Nearly a week passed, during which she gave less trouble than she had ever given before, for she was frightened out of her wits; and, having seen neither her father nor her mother all the time, suffered the cruellest apprehensions lest the new-comer had already taken his place in their affections, and she was for evermore to be kept out of their sight.

The servants were particularly kind, and, as it seemed to her, even compassionate in their behaviour to her, which gave fresh confirmation to her alarming fears.

Then came a day when, to crown her misfortunes, all her pretty frocks were put out of her sight, and one made of ugly black stuff was laid ready for use. She cried to have it taken off, and hated the sight of it; but finding that all the women in the house wore black gowns, and that the Squire had ordered them, she knew it was of no use to complain.

She asked no questions, but waited all day for an opportunity of satisfying her curiosity, and, when the wished-for moment came, she slipped up the broad oak staircase as quietly and swiftly as her little feet could carry her over the numerous shallow steps, and then scudded so fast along the deserted landing that, when she came to the door of her mother's bedroom, her heart fluttered like

a bird, and her small eager fingers trembled; so she could not turn the handle of the door for a minute or two, and when it did, she was not prepared for the sudden way in which it seemed to her startled fancy to turn on its hinges, and the awful manner in which it creaked.

She knew she was doing something she had been forbidden to do, and dreaded she knew not what. It is just how we all feel when conscience pricks us, and we stifle its warnings.

Honoria knew nothing about conscience, but she did not forget the black man who was likely to put her into his bag if she was a naughty, disobedient child. The room, too, was so dark that at first she could not see the objects it contained distinctly, and that made matters worse. She approached the bedstead instinctively directly she ran in, but she saw at once that her mamma was not there, and the curtains were gone, and both bed and bedding removed. She walked up to the toilet-table which was still, like the mirror upon it, tastefully draped with muslin fastened with lace and ribbon, and then her eyes were fascinated by a white satin pincushion she had never seen before, with large letters running over it marked by the heads of the pins stuck into it so as to form the lines—

"May He whose cradle was a manger

Bless and keep the little stranger."

Then the child's fears gave place to fury. She dashed the pin. cushion on to the ground, crumpled up the lace and ribbon that trimmed the toilet-cover as tightly as ever she could in her little hands; ran to the drawers where she knew her mother's linen was kept, tossed and tumbled it, as she scattered the floor with one article of clothing after another; and then ran dancing up and down over them like a creature possessed, wringing her small hands and crying the while as if her heart would break, and looking upon herself as the most miserable, unfortunate little wretch in the world.

The approach of footsteps was unnoticed by the child in her passion of rage and jealousy, and she felt herself lifted to a great height from the ground in strong arms that she knew to be those of her father even before she had clasped the Squire's bull-neck with her chubby arms, and buried her tear-swollen face, in an agony of shame and grief, on his broad chest.

He said not a word until he set her on her feet in a room opening out of the hall where a table was spread with a feast from which the guests had departed, and which had a cold, desolate look about it, very different from the sight the child had looked forward to every day when she used to be carried into the dining-room after dinner to enjoy the dessert, when she had wondered to see the wax.

lights reflected on the black surface of the gleaming mahoganytable set out with decanters of ruby wine, and dishes of silver and crystal full of tempting fruits, and where her mamma always sat smiling as she stretched out her arms to take her. Worst of all, there sat the old nurse rocking a cradle in which Honoria saw in a moment the long-expected stranger was placidly sleeping.

The Squire took his daughter by the hand, and led her, without speaking a word, close up to the infant.

The old woman held up her fingers. "You must not kiss your little sister yet, deary, for fear you should wake her," said the woman, with an important air peculiar to her office.

Honoria had no such amicable intentions. With the swiftness and suddenness which was a part of her passionate nature, she ran to the table, snatched up the Squire's own pepper-box, which she knew where to find, as it was always placed at her father's right hand, whished off the lid in a second, and flung the contents as well as she could at the baby's little pink face, as it lay, imbedded in lace, on the pillow under the shadow of the hood of the cradle.

Fortunately the mischief she meant to effect was prevented by the missile falling short of the innocent object at which Honoria had taken aim; and before she knew what had come to her, the child was laid across her father's knees and smacked repeatedly in the most painful and ignominous manner for the first time in her life.

"Mamma! mamma!" screamed the child, when at last she was set free and turned out of the room by the Squire-“ Mamma ! mamma!" she cried at every step, as she clambered up the stair.

case.

"You must not say mamma, miss," said the servants one after the other, as they met the little girl wandering about the house and calling out the name of their poor mistress, who was, as they knew to their sorrow, both dead and buried.

"You must not call out your poor mamma's name like that, dear," cried the stately housekeeper-" you will grieve your papa,"

Upon which Honoria, who was by no means a good child and remembered her disgraceful whipping with burning cheeks, cried all the more, "Mamma, my own mamma, where are you? why don't

you come to me?"

The Squire never forgot her behaviour or forgave it. His wife's death and the contrition she expressed at having a second time disappointed his hopes of a son and heir, had made the hard man soften to the infant she left bebind her. He desired his wife's own name of Hester might be given to the motherless child, and it