LADY CLARISSA. BY EMMA JANE WORBOISE, Author of "Father Fabian," "Overdale," "Nobly Born," Grey and Gold," JAMES CLARKE AND CO., 13, FLEET STREET. HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 27, PATERNOSTER ROW. 1876. THE bells were ringing merrily in the ancient ivied tower of Orwell Church one bright summer evening-we will not say how many years ago. You might have known, had you been there to listen, that it was no common peal ringing out so grandly and sweetly over the well-wooded meads, and green flowery vales, and pleasant lanes of Orwell Magna and its neighbourhood. They were wedding bells that awoke the echoes and filled all the soft, blue air with silvery, resonant music on that exquisite June evening; and if the old tower had been silent, or empty of those jubilant voices, no one, however dull his perceptions, could have failed to divine that something had happened, or was about to happen, of no ordinary moment to the crowds assembled in the churchyard, on the village-green, in the village street, and especially near the |