HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS, SUCCESSORS TO HENRY COLBURN, 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 1854. 249. W. 373. ALICE WENTWORTH. CHAPTER I. Vergessene Träume, erlöschene Bilder, HEINRICH HEINE. FARNDEN HALL, which had been for many years the abode of Mrs. Langdale, Sophy Bramstone's mother, under whose care Alice Wentworth and her brothers had grown up, was now again inhabited by the family to whom it belonged. They were at the sea-side at the present moment; but both on the plea of old intimacy with them, and also on account of its having been so long her home, Alice Wentworth had the power of going there whenever she pleased; and therefore it was that Mrs. Thornton was so desirous of her company on the expedition with which she wished to gratify her boys. Uncertainty respecting the time of their visit still prevented her from fixing a day, though everything else was planned. Farnden was a long drive from Darrell Place; but then, Cranfield was five miles on the road; and if Alice would give her cousins breakfast, the horses would have an hour's rest, which would enable them to make out the other ten miles easily, and reach their destination early enough to give the boys several hours for wandering in the park, rowing on the large pond, "fishing in the small one, eating dinner, &c., and returning to tea at Cranfield, where there would be another rest; after which the whole party would yet be back at Darrell Place not much later than the children's usual bedtime. But there was a thing that weighed on Mrs. Thornton's anxious mind, and threatened the destruction of the whole expeditionthe necessity, namely, of having some grown man of the party, who would undertake to look after the boys; and she was not sure when her nephews William Sandford and Richard |