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Rh be left to you without any rent. If you choose to take the land round the house, you must pay for it by the acre, as the tenants do. She was as clear about it all as though she had passed her life in a lawyer's office."

My readers will now pretty well understand what last step that excellent sister, Mrs. Harold Smith, had taken on her brother's behalf, nor will they be surprised to learn that in the course of the day Mr. Sowerby hurried back to town and put himself into communication with Miss Dunstable's lawyer.



I purpose to visit another country house in Barsetshire, but on this occasion our sojourn shall be in the eastern division, in which, as in every other county in England, electioneering matters are paramount at the present moment. It has been mentioned that Mr. Gresham junior—young Frank Gresham, as he was always called—lived at a place called Boxall Hill. This property had come to his wife by will, and he was now settled there, seeing that his father still held the family seat of the Greshams at Greshamsbury.

At the present moment Miss Dunstable was staying at Boxall Hill with Mrs. Frank Gresham. They had left London, as, indeed, all the world had done, to the terrible dismay of the London tradesmen. This dissolution of Parliament was ruining every body except the country publicans, and had, of course, destroyed the London season among other things.

Mrs. Harold Smith had only just managed to catch Miss Dunstable before she left London; but she did do so, and the great heiress had at once seen her lawyers, and instructed them how to act with reference to her mortgages on the Chaldicotes property. Miss Dunstable was in the habit of speaking of herself and her own pecuniary concerns as though she herself were rarely allowed to meddle in their management; but this was one of those small jokes which she ordinarily perpetrated; for, in truth, few ladies, and perhaps not many gentlemen, have a more thorough knowledge of their own concerns or a more potent voice in their