The sky illuminated all, with its pure celestial blue,floating clouds just passing between earth and heaven, as if they were the mantles of the guardian angels, left there, as descending, they now whispered thoughts of the other world into the eartheaten heart of man.

We, the three sisters, knew no other home, had visited no other country. The love of change had not yet awakened a longing in our hearts. It might be that our home satisfied all our desires; its beauties never palled, its comforts were boundless, and the happiness of our lives had never been broken.

But I see figures through the trees. They are returning from their ride; emerging from the avenue by the great oaktree, they will catch the first glimpse of the temple, of me, standing under the colonnade. My father My father salutes me by

removing his hat, my sisters wave their handkerchiefs.

us,

There is so much love to be divided among

that even this short absence has borne the appearance of a long parting, and I must run down to meet them at the hall door. Then they show me that I have not been forgotten. Mabel gives me a handful of the Campanula Patula, scarcely sensible that its fragile life has been torn from the parent root, so carefully has she carried it; and Pamela brings the long pendants of the lady-fern, with which she knows I can weave coronets for their hair; while my father draws forth a bunch of young nuts, that I might judge how ripe the summer was growing, and how soon we might go a-nutting.

Then they looked into my eyes, and read that I too had thought of them, and my sisters gave me their hands, to lead them to their surprise. Our father followed, and we all stood in the great hall, before the oaken stair-case. Then in their delight, I tasted my pleasure twice over.

"The darling child," said Mabel, "what taste she has!"

"And the sweetness of everything!" exclaimed Pamela.

While my father stroked my curls, and murmured out low words expressive of pleasure.

"Aladdin with his wonderful lamp could not have desired anything more lovely," asked Mabel of our father.

"No," he answered. "If we wish it, we can all rub the lamp of imagination and invention; happy those who, divining, need no genii to execute their wishes. We will search further into Eastern habits, as, though Imagination is thought to be the fool of the house, she is not to be despised, but the rather courted with pretty notions, and encouraged by the soft arts of love. See, the child has conveyed us to Ceylon. Ripe fruit hangs side by side with blooms, her oaken trellis is garlanded with flowers, while we pluck our grapes from amid them."

"She must be crowned this evening with the chaplet of favour, father," said Mabel.

"So be it, let us reward merit on the instant."

24

CHAPTER III.

"I come from far,

I'll rest myself, O world! awhile on thee;
And half in earnest, half in jest, I'll cut

My name upon thee, pass the Arch of Death,
Then on a stair of stars, go up to God."

A. SMITH.

THE antecedents of our family might be traced through a series of records orjournals, which, begun by the first owner of Lovelleigh, had been carried on with something of a religious exactitude. We were familiar with the whole of them, beginning with that of Sir Linton Lovell, knight, to our paternal grandmother's, which was the most voluminous of them all. Nothing was done in our day by our father regarding his estates, without reference to these