With an object in view Bessie could feel interested. She was going to
see her mother's home, the house where she was herself born; and on the
road she began to question whether she had any kinsfolk on her mother's
side. Mrs. Carnegie had once told her that she believed not--unless
there were descendants of her grandfather Bulmer's only brother in
America, whither he had emigrated as a young man; but she had never
heard of any. A cousin of some sort would have been most acceptable to
Bessie in her dignified isolation. She did not naturally love solitude.

The way across the park by which she had been directed brought her out
upon the high-road--a very pleasant road at that spot, with a fir wood
climbing a shallow hill opposite, bounded by a low stone fence, all
crusted with moss and lichen, age and weather.

For nearly half a mile along the roadside lay an irregular open space of
broken ground with fine scattered trees upon it, and close turf where
primroses were profuse in spring. An old woman was sitting in the shade
knitting and tending a little black cow that cropped the sweet moist
grass. Only for the sake of speaking Bessie asked again her way to the
village.

"Keep straight on, miss, you can't miss it," said the old woman, and
gazed up at her inquisitively.

So Bessie kept straight on until she came to the ivy-covered walls of
the lodge; the porch opened upon the road, and Colonel Stokes was
standing outside in conversation with another gentleman, who was the
vicar of Kirkham, Mr. Forbes. Bessie went on when she had passed them,
shyly disconcerted, for Colonel Stokes had come forward with an air of