aid De Craye. "You'll miss your cousin."

"I have," replied Willoughby, "one fully equal to supplying his place."

There was confusion in the hall for a time, and an assembly of the
household to witness the departure of Dr. Middleton and his daughter.
Vernon had been driven off by Dr. Corney, who further recommended rest
for Mr. Dale, and promised to keep an eye for Crossjay along the road.

"I think you will find him at the station, and if you do, command him
to come straight back here," Laetitia said to Clara. The answer was an
affectionate squeeze, and Clara's hand was extended to Willoughby, who
bowed over it with perfect courtesy, bidding her adieu.

So the knot was cut. And the next carriage to Dr. Middleton's was Mrs.
Mountstuart's, conveying the great lady and Colonel De Craye.

"I beg you not to wear that face with me," she said to him.

"I have had to dissemble, which I hate, and I have quite enough to
endure, and I must be amused, or I shall run away from you and enlist
that little countryman of yours, and him I can count on to be
professionally restorative. Who can fathom the heart of a girl! Here
is Lady Busshe right once more! And I was wrong. She must be a gambler
by nature. I never should have risked such a guess as that. Colonel De
Craye, you lengthen your face preternaturally, you distort it
purposely."

"Ma'am," returned De Craye, "the boast of our army is never to know
when we are beaten, and that tells of a great-hearted soldiery. But
there's a field where the Briton must own his defeat, whether smiling
or crying, and I'm not so sure that a short howl doesn't do him
honour."

"She was, I am certain, in love with Vernon Whitford all along.
Colonel De Craye!"

"Ah!" the colonel drank it in. "I have learnt that it was not the
gentleman in whom I am chiefly interested. So it was not so hard for
the lady to vow to friend Willoughby she would marry no one else?"

"Girls are unfathomable! And Lady Busshe--I know she did not go by
character--shot one of her random guesses, and she triumphs. We shall
never hear the last of it. And I had all the opportunities. I'm bound
to confess I had."

"Did you by chance, ma'am," De Craye said, with a twinkle, "drop a hint
to Willoughby of her turn for Vernon Whitford?"

"No," said Mrs. Mountstuart, "I'm not a mischief-maker; and the policy
of the county is to keep him in love with himself, or Patterne will be
likely to be as dull as it was without a lady en