so
immensely interested; and he had the cruelty to propose to read it to
the ladies here. He did read it, his hostess listening with gratified
approval and keeping a controlling eye on Miss Fairfax, who, when she
saw what impended, would have escaped had she been able. Miss Burleigh
bore it as she bore everything--with smiling resignation--but she
enjoyed the vivacity of Bessie's declaration afterward that the lecture
was unpardonable.

"What a shockingly vain old gentleman! Could we not have waited to read
his article in print?" said she.

"Probably it will never be in print. He toadies my aunt, who likes to be
credited with a literary taste, but Cecil says people laugh at him; he
is not of any weight, either literary or political, though he has great
pretensions. We shall have him for a week at least, and I have no doubt
he has brought manuscript to last the whole time."

Bessie was so uncomfortably candid as to cry out that she was glad,
then, her visit would soon be over; and then she tried to extenuate her
plain-speaking, not very skilfully.

Miss Burleigh accepted her plea with a gentleness that reproached her:
"We hoped that you would be happy at Brentwood with Cecil here; his
company is generally supposed to make any place delightful. He is
exceedingly dear to us all; no one knows how good he is until they have
lived with him a long while."

"Oh, I am sure he is good; I like him much better now than I did at
first; but if he runs away to Norminster and leaves us a helpless prey
to Mr. Logger, that is not delightful," rejoined Bessie winsomely.

Miss Burleigh kissed and forgave her, acknowledged that it was the
reverse of delightful, and conveyed an intimation to her brother by
which he profited. Mr. Logger favored the ladies with another reading on
Sunday afternoon--an essay on sermons, and twice as long as one. Mr.
Jones should have been there: this essay was much heavier artillery than
Miss Hague's little paper-winged arrows. In the middle of it, just at
the moment when endurance became agony and release bliss, Mr. Cecil
Burleigh entered and invited Miss Fairfax to walk into the town to
minster prayers, and Bessie went so gladly that his sister was quite
consoled in being left to hear Mr. Logger to an end.

The two were about to ascend the minster steps when they espied Mr.
Fairfax in the distance, and turned to meet him. He had been lunching
with his son. At the first glance Bessie knew that her gran