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VERNEY COURT:

AN IRISH NOVEL.

CHAPTER I.

BOUND FOR IRELAND.

SEVERAL years have passed since the events occurred which I am about to relate in this narrative.

It is not, however, lest they should slip from my memory that I have now resolved to write them. There is little chance of that while I sit at my window, and listen to the voice of the Atlantic; while my eye rests

VOL. I.

B

upon a blackened pile in the distance, standing out gaunt and bare against the sea and sky-an irregular, ugly ruin, with none of the picturesque beauty of decay about it, covered by no softening mantle of ivy-on whose dark walls, it seems to me, the moonbeams never rest, and over which the stars shine paler than elsewhere. No; it is not lest I should forget a single circumstance that I write; but rather in hope that by doing so they may haunt my mind less continually.

The commencement of my story dates from a certain March morning, and the scene that rises before me is a room in a house in London. Boxes stand corded on the floor, and beside them a young girl in travelling dress-myself.

"Grace, are you ready?" calls a voice on the stairs, and the next minute a lady enters.

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My dear Grace, it is time for you to start. You have but just time to reach the train. Cheer up, my dear; though you are going among strangers, they will not long be so. Perhaps before a month you may have quite forgotten your friends here."

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'Oh, no! no, indeed, I shall not, Mrs. Compton, I cried.

"Well, my dear, it is time now to say good-bye. But remember, if ever you should be in any trouble or difficulty, you will always find a welcome and a home here. Come now."

I followed Mrs. Compton, whose school I was leaving, downstairs, and, having taken a hasty farewell of my school companions, entered the carriage which was waiting for

me.

They stood at the door as I drove off,

waving their handkerchiefs and kissing hands; but I could scarcely see them for the blinding tears.

Leaving school was to me a very different thing from what it usually is. This school had been my home for fourteen years; I had been sent to it by my guardian, after my father's death, when I was but six years old, and from that time till now had never left it for a single day.

My guardian, with whom I was going to live, was a complete stranger, and in no way related to me. He had been my father's friend, I had heard, and this, with the knowledge that his name was Verney, and that he resided in Ireland, was the amount of my information respecting him.

Of my own position I was equally ignorant, and did not know whether I possessed a

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