Mildred: An Autumn Romance.

MILDRED : AN AUTUMN ROMANCE .

BY BRO . EMRA HOLMES , Author of " Tales , Poems , and Masonic Papers ; " " The Path of Life : An Allegory ;" "Amabel Vaughan ; " " Notes on the United Order of the Temple and Hvsj . ital , " etc ., etc . CHAPTER II .

ABBEI BUILDETGS . —AtlLDRED ' s STORX . THST facing the Avestern entrance of the church stand the Abbey Buildings on ono ^ side , within their own pretty grounds , and nearer the Abbey gateway the pleasant Elizabethan vicarage , ivy covered , ancl with many gables ; on the other side , at right angles , the High-street ; at the farther corner of the great quadrangle , of ivhich the

Abbey walls form two sides , and the church the centre , stand the almshouses and national schools , aud further on some gentlemen ' s houses abutting on the road . At No . 1 , Abbey Buildings , lived the Misses Bethune , two old ladies , of antique manners and primitive notions , with their orphan niece and ward—Mildred Bethune . Mildred ' s father had been an artist and a genius , blessed with a generous nature , coupled with ignorance of the world and its ways ; and totally unfitted to cope with the ivickedness

that is therein . He had married early in life a Miss Copley , a lady of independent income ( some _ £ 300 a year ) , and Avhich had been Avisely settled on herself ancl her offspring . George Bethune was a man of old family , poor , proud , ancl clever . Miss Copley had met him rather more than halfway , or he would certainly never have married her , for he scorned to be thought a fortune-hunter , and three hundred a year was a little

fortune in St . Benot ' s thirty years ago . At first they had , after their marriage , removed to London , where great things were expected , and George hoped to make himself a name . He had done Avell at the Royal Academy as a student , had Avon the silver medal for " Still Life , " and had got a commission to paint the portrait of the son of the then Lord Mayor . But somehow things did not prosper ivith him . He had an artist ' s idea of beauty , elegance , ancl refinement , and . ivas always building castles in the air . When he .. old a picture for . £ 25 , he ' would go and spend £ ' 50 on the strength of it .

This could not last long , and thc end of it was , ho failed , left London with his wife and only child Mildred , and came back to live at St . Benet ' s on his wife's little fortuneof which he put by £ 50 a year to pay off some preliminary debts , and which he ivas too honourable to disavow , though his bankruptcy had set him free from them . Mrs . Bethune died , and soon after her husband , ivho had mourned her loss sincerely ; and Mildred Avas left to the care of his two maiden sisters , nieces of the late Vicar of

St . Benet ' s . Mr .. Bethune during the last ten or fifteen years of his life had given up ambition , and settled down as a drawing master , teaching the upper ten of the St .. Benet ' s world , and occasionally going over to give lessons at Peterborough ancl Ely . Thus it had come to pass that Mildred ancl Marmaduke first met ; for the General , finding his youngest son had a strong penchant for drawing , engaged Mr . Bethune to teach him ; and as it ivas sometimes inconvenient when the house was full of guests , or at election times , to have Mr . Bethune there , Marmaduke , then seventeen , ancl preparing for Sandhurst , us id to go over to the Great Whyto where the artist lived , and get his lesson with Mildred ,