moment of their brief and brilliant empire. The lake lay before them sparkling and silvery, and the eye could just catch the swans, outlined in light, not shadow, in their graceful progress over their own domain. The majority of the trees were leafless, but many yet wore a cheerful array of green. The holly upreared its shining leaves—the ivy drooped from the older stems, a dream of their once lovely youth—and the mistletoe crept round many of the oaks—that pleasant parasite, whose associations belong rather to the hearth and lighted hall than to its native branches. The gay singing of the birds came wakened by the soft west wind; and immediately before the window, a robin, with its scarlet plumage and dear soft eye, was picking up the crumbs which Francesca had flung from the breakfast-table.
Nor did the scene lack human life and human action. In the fore ground Albert was trying the mettle of a horse that had been a recent purchase. The eye of father and sister alike forgot every other object while watching the evolutions of the young and graceful boy, who realised the descriptions of romance as, his golden curls dancing on the wind, his cheek flushed with exercise, and his large blue eyes dilated and flashing with triumph, he ruled the snow-white palfrey by a wave of the
