P. S. I can scarcely venture to ask you to bring Helen yourself to town,
but I should be glad if other inducements to take the journey afforded me
the pleasure of seeing you once again. I am anxious, in addition to such
details of my late sister as you may be enabled to give me, to learn
something of the history of her connection with Mr. Ardworth, in whom I
felt much interested years ago, and who, I am recently informed, left an
infant, his supposed son, under your care. So long absent from England,
how much have I to learn, and how little the mere gravestones tell us of
the dead!

While the vicar is absorbed in this letter, equally unwelcome and
unexpected; while, unconscious as the daughter of Ceres, gathering
flowers when the Hell King drew near, of the change that awaited her and
the grim presence that approached on her fate, Helen bends still over the
bank odorous with shrinking violets,--we turn where the new generation
equally invites our gaze, and make our first acquaintance with two
persons connected with the progress of our tale.

The britzska stopped. The servant, who had been gradually accumulating
present dust and future rheumatisms on the "bad eminence" of a rumble-
tumble, exposed to the nipping airs of an English sky, leaped to the
ground and opened the carriage-door.

"This is the best place for the view, sir,--a little to the right."

Percival St. John threw aside his book (a volume of Voyages), whistled to
a spaniel dozing by his side, and descended lightly. Light was the step
of the young man, and merry was the bark of the dog, as it chased from
the road the startled sparrow, rising high into the clear air,--