It was the commencement of autumn. The verdure of summer still lingered on the trees; the sky, if not so cloudless, was almost as refulgent as Italy; and the pigeons, bright and glancing, clustered on the roof of the hall of Cherbury. The steward was in attendance; the household, all in deep mourning, were assembled; everything was in readiness for the immediate arrival of Lady Annabel Herbert.

”Tis nearly four years come Martinmas,’ said the grey-headed butler, ‘since my lady left us.’

‘And no good has come of it,’ said the housekeeper. ‘And for my part I never heard of good coming from going to foreign parts.’

‘I shall like to see Miss Venetia again,’ said a housemaid. ‘Bless her sweet face.’

‘I never expected to see her Miss Venetia again from all we heard,’ said a footman.

‘God’s will be done!’ said the grey-headed butler; ‘but I hope she will find happiness at home. ’Tis nigh on twenty years since I first nursed her in these arms.’

‘I wonder if there is any new Lord Cadurcis,’ said the footman. ‘I think he was the last of the line.’

‘It would have been a happy day if I had lived to have seen the poor young lord marry Miss Venetia,’ said the housekeeper. ‘I always thought that match was made in heaven.’

‘He was a sweet-spoken young gentleman,’ said the housemaid.

‘For my part,’ said the footman, ‘I should like to have seen our real master, Squire Herbert. He was a famous gentleman by all accounts.’

‘I wish they had lived quietly at home,’ said the housekeeper.

‘I shall never forget the time when my lord returned,’ said the grey-headed butler. ‘I must say I thought it was a match.’

‘Mistress Pauncefort seemed to think so,’ said the housemaid.

‘And she understands those things,’ said the footman.

‘I see the carriage,’ said a servant who was at a window in the hall. All immediately bustled about, and the housekeeper sent a message to the steward.

The carriage might be just discovered at the end of the avenue. It was some time before it entered the iron gates that were thrown open for its reception. The steward stood on the steps with his hat off, the servants were ranged in order at the entrance. Touching their horses with the spur, and cracking their whips, the postilions dashed round the circular plot and stopped at the hall-door. Under any circumstances a return home after an interval of years is rather an awful moment; there was not a servant who was not visibly affected. On the outside of the carriage was a foreign servant and Mistress Pauncefort, who was not so profuse as might have been expected in her recognitions of her old friends; her countenance was graver than of yore. Misfortune and misery had subdued even Mistress Pauncefort. The foreign servant opened the door of the carriage; a young man, who was a stranger to the household, but who was in deep mourning, alighted, and then Lady Annabel appeared. The steward advanced to welcome her, the household bowed and curtseyed. She smiled on them for a moment graciously and kindly, but her countenance immediately reassumed a serious air, and whispering one word to the strange gentleman, she entered the hall alone, inviting the steward to follow her.

‘I hope your ladyship is well; welcome home, my lady; welcome again to Cherbury; a welcome return, my lady; hope Miss Venetia is quite well; happy to see your ladyship amongst us again, and Miss Venetia too, my lady.’ Lady Annabel acknowledged these salutations with kindness, and then, saying that Miss Herbert was not very well and was fatigued with her journey, she dismissed her humble but trusty friends. Lady Annabel then turned and nodded to her fellow-traveller.

Upon this Lord Cadurcis, if we must indeed use a title from which he himself shrank, carried a shrouded form in his arms into the hall, where the steward alone lingered, though withdrawn to the back part of the scene; and Lady Annabel, advancing to meet him, embraced his treasured burden, her own unhappy child.

‘Now, Venetia! dearest Venetia!’ she said, ”tis past; we are at home.’

Venetia leant upon her mother, but made no reply.

‘Upstairs, dearest,’ said Lady Annabel: ‘a little exertion, a very little.’ Leaning on her mother and Lord Cadurcis, Venetia ascended the staircase, and they reached the terrace-room. Venetia looked around her as she entered the chamber; that scene of her former life, endeared to her by so many happy hours, and so many sweet incidents; that chamber where she had first seen Plantagenet. Lord Cadurcis supported her to a chair, and then, overwhelmed by irresistible emotion, she sank back in a swoon.

No one was allowed to enter the room but Pauncefort. They revived her; Lord Cadurcis holding her hand, and touching, with a watchful finger, her pulse. Venetia opened her eyes, and looked around her. Her mind did not wander; she immediately recognised where she was, and recollected all that had happened. She faintly smiled, and said, in a low voice ‘You are all too kind, and I am very weak. After our trials, what is this, George?’ she added, struggling to appear animated; ‘you are at length at Cherbury.’

Once more at Cherbury! It was, indeed, an event that recalled a thousand associations. In the wild anguish of her first grief, when the dreadful intelligence was broken to her, if anyone had whispered to Venetia that she would yet find herself once more at Cherbury, she would have esteemed the intimation as mockery. But time and hope will struggle with the most poignant affliction, and their influence is irresistible and inevitable. From her darkened chamber in their Mediterranean villa, Venetia had again come forth, and crossed mountains, and traversed immense plains, and journeyed through many countries. She could not die, as she had supposed at first that she must, and therefore she had exerted herself to quit, and to quit............