do not believe I knew anything of this!" she covered her face with
both hands and stood mute.

All of chivalry that Kenelm had received with his baptismal appellation
was aroused. He sprang up, and, bending his knee as he drew one of her
hands into his own, he said,--

"I am as convinced that your uncle's words are abhorrent to you as I am
that you are a pure-hearted and high-spirited woman, of whose friendship
I shall be proud. We meet again." Then releasing her hand, he addressed
Mr. Bovill: "Sir, you are unworthy the charge of your niece. Had you not
been so, she would have committed no imprudence. If she have any female
relation, to that relation transfer your charge."

"I have! I have!" cried Elsie; "my lost mother's sister: let me go to
her."

"The woman who keeps a school!" said Mr. Bovill sneeringly.

"Why not?" asked Kenelm.

"She never would go there. I proposed it to her a year ago. The minx
would not go into a school."

"I will now, Uncle."

"Well, then, you shall at once; and I hope you'll be put on bread and
water. Fool! fool! you have spoilt your own game. Mr. Chillingly, now
that Miss Elsie has turned her back on herself, I can convince you that
I am not the mad man you thought me. I was at the festive meeting held
when you came of age: my brother is one of your father's tenants. I did
not recognize your face immediately in the excitement of our encounter
and in your change of dress; but in walking home it struck me that I had
seen it before, and I knew it at once when you entered the room to-day.
It has been a tussle between us which should beat the other. You have
beat me; and thanks to that idiot! If she had not put her spoke into my
wheel, she would have lived to be 'my lady.' Now good-day, sir."

"Mr. Bovill, you offered to shake hands: shake hands now, and promise
me, with the good grace of one honourable combatant to another, that
Miss Elsie shall go to her aunt the schoolmistress at once if she wishes
it. Hark ye, my friend" (this in Mr. Bovill's ear): "a man can never
manage a woman. Till a woman marries, a prudent man leaves her to women;
when she does marry, she manages her husband, and there's an end of it."

Kenelm was gone.

"Oh, wise young man!" murmured the uncle. "Elsie, dear, how can you go
to your aunt's while you are in that dress?"

Elsie started as from a trance, her eyes directed towards the
doorway through which Kenelm had vanished. "This dress," she said
contemptu