himself for the live-long day, in the sedentary sport of shooting
rabbits. And there we leave him for the present, signifying to the
distant inmates of his house the industrious pursuit of his unsocial
occupation, by the dropping fire that sullenly, from hour to hour, echoed
from the remote woods.

Mrs. Marston issued her orders; and having set on foot all the necessary
preparations for so unwonted an event as a stranger's visit of some
duration, she betook herself to her little boudoir--the scene of many an
hour of patient but bitter suffering, unseen by human eye, and unknown,
except to the just Searcher of hearts, to whom belongs mercy--and
vengeance.

Mrs. Marston had but two friends to whom she had ever spoken upon the
subject nearest her heart--the estrangement of her husband, a sorrow to
which even time had failed to reconcile her. From her children this grief
was carefully concealed. To them she never uttered the semblance of a
complaint. Anything that could by possibility have reflected blame or
dishonor upon their father, she would have perished rather than have
allowed them so much as to suspect. The two friends who did understand
her feelings, though in different degrees, were, one, a good and
venerable clergyman, the Rev. Doctor Danvers, a frequent visitor and
occasional guest at Gray Forest, where his simple manners and unaffected
benignity and tenderness of heart had won the love of all, with the
exception of its master, and commanded even his respect. The second was
no other than the young French governess, Mademoiselle de Barras, in
whose ready sympathy and consolatory counsels she found no small
happiness. The society of this young lady had indeed become, next to that
of her daughter, her greatest comfort and pleasure.