"Ah, Geoffrey! those were halcyon days, when I returned to spend the vacations at the Lodge, and found myself ever a welcome visitor at the Hall. With a proud heart I recounted to Sir Alexander, all my boyish triumphs at school, and the good baronet listened to my enthusiastic details with the most intense interest, and fought all his juvenile battles over again, with boyish ardour, to the infinite delight of our admiring audience, Margaret and Alice. The latter spent most of her time with Miss Moncton, who was so much attached to her foster-sister, and shed so many tears at parting from her, that Sir Alexander yielded to her earnest request for Alice to remain with her, and the young heiress and the huntsman's blooming daughter were seldom apart. Miss Moncton's governess, an amiable and highly accomplished woman, took as much pains in teaching Alice as she did in superintending the education of her high-born pupil. The beautiful girl acquired her tasks so rapidly, and with such an intense desire for improvement, that Sir Alexander declared, that she beat his Madge hollow.
"Dinah North exulted in the growing charms of her grand-daughter. If the old woman regarded anything on earth with affection, it was the tall, fair girl so unlike herself. And Alice, too--I have often wondered how it were possible--Alice loved with the most ardent affection, that forbidding-looking, odious creature.
"To me, since the death of my mother, she had been civil but reserved--never addressing me without occasion required--and I neither sought nor cared for her regard.
"It was on the return of one of those holidays, when I returned home full of eager anticipations of happiness, of joyous days spent at the Park in company with Margaret and Alice, that I first beheld that artful villain, Robert Moncton.
"It was a lovely July evening. The York coach set me down at the Park gates, and I entered the pretty cottage with my scanty luggage on my back, and found the lawyer engaged in earnest conversation with my grandmother.
"Struck with the appearance of the man, which at first sight is very remarkable, I paused for some minutes on the threshold, unobserved by the parties. Like you, Geoffrey, I shall never forget the impression his countenance made upon me. The features so handsome, the colouring so fine, the person that of a finished gentleman; and yet, all this pleasing combination of form and face marred by that cold, cruel, merciless eye. Its expression so dead, so joyless, sent a chill through my whole frame, and I shrank from encountering its icy gaze, and was about quietly to retire by a back door, when my attention was arrested by the following brief conversation.