much."

Percival nodded: "Keep my secret. They sha'n't say that I lived on my
grandfather first, and then on Aunt Harriet or Sissy. They may find it
out later, and welcome if I have shown them that I can do without them
all."

"Ah yes," said Hammond a little vaguely. "Here we are."

CHAPTER XXXII.

LOTTIE WINS.

Percival had not been wrong about Lottie: she had at any rate only
partially understood what she was doing. The poor child had been
bitterly humiliated by the discovery that he did not love her, and felt
that she was disgraced for life by her ill-judged advance. The feeling
was high-flown and exaggerated no doubt, but one hardly expects to find
all the cool wisdom of Ecclesiastes in a brain of seventeen. Lottie,
flying from Percival's scorn as she supposed, was ready for any
desperate leap. What wonder that she took one into Horace's open arms!
How could she find a better salve for wounded pride than by captivating
the man who had passed her by as nothing but a child, and who had been,
as she would have said, "much too great a swell to take any notice of
_her_"? He had dangled in a half-hearted fashion after Addie, and had
given himself airs. Wounded vanity had attracted him to Lottie, but,
smitten by sudden passion, he wooed her hotly, with an eagerness which
startled even himself. How could she be unconscious of the difference
and of her triumph? Percival Thorne, who had slighted her, should see
her reigning at Brackenhill!

Proud, pleased, grateful, excited, dizzy with success, Lottie was swept
away by the torrent of mingled feelings. Her sorrow for her father's
death was violent, but not lasting. She could not feel his loss for any
length of time, she had always been so much more her mother's child.
Even during her mourning there was something of romance in Horace's
letters of comfort, for Horace, who had always been the laziest
correspondent in the world, wrote ardent letters to Lottie, and used all
the hackneyed yet ever fresh expedients for transmitting them which have
been bequeathed to us by generations of bygone lovers. There were
meetings too, more romantic still. No one is so sentimental as the man
who is startled out of a languid scorn of sentiment. He does not know
where to stop. Horace would have been capable of serenading Lottie if
Mrs. Blake would only have slept on the other side of the house.

Addie was unconscious of the fiery romance which went on close at hand.
She felt th