y well."

"I assure you I do not. If you were speaking of yourself I could
understand you."

"Oh, you can get out of it cleverly, like all men; but you can't
hoodwink me. You shouldn't have pretended to like Gertrude when you were
really pulling a cord with Agatha. And she, too, pretending to flirt
with Sir Charles--as if he would care twopence for her!"

Trefusis seemed N little disturbed. "I hope Miss Lindsay had no
such--but she could not."

"Oh, couldn't she? You will soon see whether she had or not."

"You misunderstood us, Lady Brandon; Miss Lindsay knows better.
Remember, too, that this proposal of mine was quite unpremeditated. This
morning I had no tender thoughts of anyone except one whom it would be
improper to name."

"Oh, that is all talk. It won't do now."

"I will talk no more at present. I must be off to the village to
telegraph to my solicitor. If I meet Erskine I will tell him the good
news."

"He will be delighted. He thought, as we all did, that you were cutting
him out with Gertrude."

Trefusis smiled, shook his head, and, with a glance of admiring homage
to Jane's charms, went out. Jane was contemplating herself in the glass
when a servant begged her to come and speak to Master Charles and Miss
Fanny. She hurried upstairs to the nursery, where her boy and girl,
disputing each other's prior right to torture the baby, had come to
blows. They were somewhat frightened, but not at all appeased, by Jane's
entrance. She scolded, coaxed, threatened, bribed, quoted Dr. Watts,
appealed to the nurse and then insulted her, demanded of the children
whether they loved one another, whether they loved mamma, and whether
they wanted a right good whipping. At last, exasperated by her own
inability to restore order, she seized the baby, which had cried
incessantly throughout, and, declaring that it was doing it on purpose
and should have something real to cry for, gave it an exemplary
smacking, and ordered the others to bed. The boy, awed by the fate of
his infant brother, offered, by way of compromise, to be good if Miss
Wylie would come and play with him, a proposal which provoked from his
jealous mother a box on the ear that sent him howling to his cot. Then
she left the room, pausing on the threshold to remark that if she heard
another sound from them that day, they might expect the worst from her.
On descending, heated and angry, to the drawing-room, she found Agatha
there alone, looking out of windo