CHAPTER VII.
"Alone! alone! how drear it is Always to be alone!" WILLES It was only a few days after Adelaide had suggested to her brother the propriety of separating Elsie from her nurse, that he had the offer of a very fine estate in the immediate neighborhood of his father's plantation.
Mr.Granville, the present owner, was about removing to a distant part of the country, and having become somewhat reduced in circumstances, was anxious to sell, and as the place suited Mr.Dinsmore exactly, they were not long in coming to an arrangement, satisfactory to both, by which it passed into his hands.
Horace Dinsmore had inherited a large fortune from his mother, and having plenty of money at his command, he immediately set about making sundry improvements upon his new purchase; laying out the grounds, and repairing and enlarging the already fine old mansion, adding all the modern conveniences, and furnishing it in the most tasteful and elegant style.
And so "Rumor, with her thousand tongues," soon had it noised abroad that he was about to bring home a second wife, and to that cause many attributed Elsie's pale and altered looks.
Such, however, was not Mr.Dinsmore's intention.
"I must have a housekeeper," he said to Adelaide.

"I shall send Chloe there.

She will do very well for the present, and it will give me the opportunity I desire of separating her from Elsie, while in the meantime I can be looking out for a better." "But you are not going to leave us yourself, Horace ?" said his sister inquiringly.
"Not immediately, Adelaide; I intend to end this controversy with Elsie first, and I indulge the hope that the prospect of sharing such a home with me as soon as she submits, will go far towards subduing her." Mr.Dinsmore shrank from the thought of Elsie's grief, if forced to part from her nurse; but he was not a man to let his own feelings, or those of others, prevent him from carrying out any purpose he had formed, if, as in this case, he could persuade himself that he was doing right.

And so--all his arrangements being now made--the very morning after his late interview with Elsie, Chloe was summoned to his presence.
He informed her of his purchase, and that it was his intention to send her there to take charge of his house and servants, for the present.
Chloe, who was both extremely surprised and highly flattered by this proof of her young master's confidence, looked very much delighted, as, with a low courtesy, she expressed her thanks, and her willingness to undertake the charge.

But a sudden thought struck her, and she asked anxiously if "her child" was to go with her.
Mr.Dinsmore said "_No_," very decidedly; and when Chloe told him that that being the case, she would much rather stay where she was, if he would let her, he said she could not have any choice in the matter; _she_ must go, and Elsie must stay.
Chloe burst into an agony of tears and sobs, begging to know why she was to be separated from the child she had loved and cherished ever since her birth; the child committed to her charge by her dying mother?
What had she done to so displease her master, that he had determined to subject her to such a bitter trial?
Mr.Dinsmore was a good deal moved by her grief, but still not to be turned from his purpose.