r she had not excited his curiosity in the least and she had wanted
him to ask questions.

"It seems very sad, poor girl!" she said after a pause.

"My dear mother," said the young squire rather impatiently, "Is it not
rather foolish of you to speak of Beatrice Lambent as `poor girl'? She
must be past thirty."

"I was not speaking of Beatrice Lambent, my dear," said Mrs Canninge;
"though, really, George, I do not think you ought to jump at conclusions
like that about dear Beatrice's age, which is, as she informed me
herself, twenty-five. I was speaking of their _protegee_ at the
Vicarage."

"I beg your pardon," said George Canninge. "I did not know, though,
that they had a _protegee_."

"Well, perhaps I am not quite correct, my dear boy, in calling her their
_protegee_; but they certainly have taken great interest in her, and it
seems very sad for her to have turned out so badly. They took such
pains about getting the right sort of person, too."

"Whom do you mean?" said the young man carelessly; "their new cook?
Why, the parson was bragging about her tremendously the other day when
he dined here--a woman who could make soup fit for a prince out of next
to nothing."

"My dear boy, how you do run away, and how cynically and bitterly you
speak!" exclaimed Mrs Canninge, laying her hands upon her son's
shoulders. "I was not speaking of Mr Lambent's cook; I meant the new
schoolmistress."

There was a pause.

"I felt his heart give a great throb," said Mrs Canninge to herself.
"Calm as he is striving to be, I can understand him, and read him as
easily as can be."

"Indeed!" said George Canninge at last, as soon as he could master his
emotion. "I was not aware the Vicarage people thought so much of Miss--
of the new schoolmistress."

"Well, you see, dear, she is only a schoolmistress, but they have been
very kind and considerate to her. They found her to be a young person
of prepossessing manners, and, like all country people, they took it for
granted that she would be worthy of trust; and, therefore this discovery
must have been a great shock to them."

It needed all George Canninge's self-command to keep him calmly seated
there while his mother, from what she considered to be a sense of duty,
went on poisoning his wound. But he mastered himself, and bore it all
like a stoic, denying himself the luxury of asking questions, though the
suspense was maddening, and he burned to hear what his mother had to