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at all while David was away? She urged that she could manage very well on seventy or eighty pounds a year, if she and her boy went to some cheap lodgings in a strange neighborhood, where nobody knew them; but her husband would not listen to such a plan. The worry and fret of his brain had grown almost to fever-height, when his aunt made a proposal, which he accepted in impatient haste. This was that Sophy should make her home at Bolton Villa for the full time of his absence; on condition that Charlie, a boy of seven years old, full of life and spirits, should be sent to school for the same term.
Sophy rebelled for a little while, but in vain. In thinking of the eighteen long and dreary months her husband would be away, she had counted upon having the consolation of her child's companionship. But no other scheme presented itself; and she felt the sacrifice must be made for David's sake. A suitable school was found for Charlie; and he was placed in it a day or two before she had to journey down to Southampton with her husband. No soul on deck that day was more sorrowful than hers. David's hollow cheeks, and thin, stooping frame, and the feeble hand that clasped hers till the last moment, made the hope of ever seeing him again seem a mad folly. Her sick heart refused to be comforted. He was sanguine, and spoke almost gayly of his return; but she was filled with anguish. A strong persuasion seized upon her that she should see his face no more; and when the bitter moment of parting was over, she travelled back alone, heart-stricken and crushed in spirit, to her new home under Mrs. Bolton's roof.
CHAPTER II.
ANN HOLLAND
Bolton Villa was not more than a stone's throw from the rectory and the church. Sophy could hear the same shrieks of the martins wheeling about the tower, and the same wintry chant of the robins amid the ivy creeping up it. The familiar striking of the church clock and the chime of the bells rang alike through the windows of both houses. But there was no sound of her husband's voice and no merry shout of Charlie's, and the difference was appalling to her. She could not endure it.
Mrs. Bolton was exceedingly proud of her villa. It had been bought expressly to please her by the late archdeacon, and altered under her own superintendence. Her tastes and wishes had been studied throughout. The interior was something like a diary of her life. The broad oak staircase was decorated with flags and banners from all the countries she had travelled through; souvenirs labelled with the names of every town she had visited, and the date of that event, lay scattered about. The entrance-hall, darkened by the heavy banners on the staircase, was a museum of curiosities collected by herself. The corners and niches were filled with plaster casts of famous statuary, which were supposed to look as fine as their marble originals in the gloom surrounding them. Every room was crowded with ornaments and knick-knacks, all of which had some association with herself. Even those apartments not seen by guests were no less encumbered with mementoes that had been discarded from time to time in favor of newer treasures. Mrs. Bolton never dared to change her servants, and it cannot be wondered at, that while offering a home to her nephew's wife, she could not extend her invitation to a mischievous boy of seven.
But however interesting Bolton Villa might be to its mistress, it was not altogether a home favorable for the recovery of a bowed-down spirit, though Mrs. Bolton could not understand why Sophy, surrounded with so many blessings and with so much to be thankful for, should fall into a low, nervous fever shortly after she had parted with her husband and child. The house was quiet, fearfully quiet to Sophy. There was a depressing hush about it altogether different from the cheerful tranquillity of her own home. Very few visitors broke through its monotony, for Mrs. Bolton's social pinnacle was too high above her immediate neighbors for them to climb up to it; whilst those whose station was somewhat on a level with hers lived too faraway, or were too young and frivolous for friendly intercourse. There were formal dinner-parties at stated intervals, and occasionally a neighboring clergyman to be entertained. But these came few and far between, and Sophy Chantrey found herself very much alone amid the banners and souvenirs that banished her boy from the house.
Mrs. Bolton herself was very often away. There was always something to be done in the parish which should by right have been Sophy's work, but her aunt had always discouraged any