Before that day scarcely a soul had been seen near her father's house for weeks.

When a noise like the brushing skirt of a visitor was heard on the doorstep, it proved to be a scudding leaf; when a carriage seemed to be nearing the door, it was her father grinding his sickle on the stone in the garden for his favourite relaxation of trimming the box-tree borders to the plots.

A sound like luggage thrown down from the coach was a gun far away at sea; and what looked like a tall man by the gate at dusk was a yew bush cut into a quaint and attenuated shape.

There is no such solitude in country places now as there was in those old days.
Yet all the while King George and his court were at his favourite sea- side resort, not more than five miles off.
The daughter's seclusion was great, but beyond the seclusion of the girl lay the seclusion of the father.

If her social condition was twilight, his was darkness.