tever I did was wrong. If I'd told him
I was going to marry a princess, it wouldn't have satisfied him. Since
this time last year I've hardly had a good word. I've been watched and
lectured, and treated like an outsider here, in my own home. You know
it's true, and you know to whom I owe it. I never expected to have my
rights: I thought my grandfather would have no peace till I was driven
out of Brackenhill. And even now I can't understand how it is that I am
master here." Percival smiled again, to himself this time. "But Lottie
was willing to share my poverty--God bless her!--and I won't let an hour
go by without owning my wife. I should be ashamed of myself if I did."

Horace paused, not unconscious of the weakness of his position, yet more
like the Horace of old days to look at--flushed, with a happy loyalty in
his eyes and his proud head high in the air.

"No one will blame you for marrying the girl you loved," said Percival
in his strong voice. "That is exactly what my father did. It is true
that you manage matters in a different way, and naturally the result is
different." He rose. "I prefer my father's way--result and all." And
with a bow to the assembled company young Thorne walked out of the room.

Horace looked round to see how the attack was received--at Aunt Harriet,
who was wiping away the quick coming tears; at Hardwicke, who was
looking at the door through which Percival had vanished; at Hammond, who
came forward a step or two. "I ordered a dog-cart to come over from
Fordborough for me," he said. "If you will allow me I will ring and have
it brought round."

"You are going?" said Horace.

"We shall just catch the four-o'clock train very comfortably if we go
now," Godfrey replied. "Thorne will prefer going by that."

"I see: you take his part. Very well. I suppose sooner or later you must
choose between us: as well now as later." Horace rang the bell.

"Horace," said Hammond, dropping his voice, yet speaking in the same
tone of authority he had used once before that day, "for the first time
in your life Mrs. Middleton is your guest. If you have a spark of right
feeling--and you have more than that--you will not make her position
here more painful than it must be. We will defer all discussion: there
_must_ be a truce while she is here.--My dog-cart," he said over his
shoulder to the servant. "It was to come from Fordborough. At
once.--Keep out of the way ten minutes hence when your cousin goes," he
a