enly visible to her troubled eyes. She
put away the book as if it had stung her, and made a precipitate
retreat. She shook her head as she descended the stair--she re-entered
the carriage in gloomy silence. When it returned up Prickett's Lane, the
three ladies again saw their nephew, this time entering the door of No.
10. He had his prayer-book under his arm, and Miss Leonora seized upon
this professional symbol to wreak her wrath upon it. "I wonder if he
can't pray by a sick woman without his prayer-book?" she cried. "I never
was so provoked in my life. How is it he doesn't know better? His father
is not pious, but he isn't a Puseyite, and old uncle Wentworth was very
sound--he was brought up under the pure Gospel. How is that the boys are
so foolish, Dora?" said Miss Leonora, sharply; "it must be your doing.
You have told them tales and things, and put true piety out of their
head."

"My doing!" said Miss Dora, faintly; but she was too much startled by
the suddenness of the attack to make any coherent remonstrance. Miss
Leonora tossed back her angry head, and pursued that inspiration,
finding it a relief in her perplexity.

"It must be _all_ your doing," she said. "How can I tell that you are
not a Jesuit in disguise? one has read of such a thing. The boys were
as good, nice, pious boys as one could wish to see; and there's Gerald
on the point of perversion, and Frank--I tell you, Dora, it must be
your fault."

"That was always my opinion," said Miss Cecilia; and the accused,
after a feeble attempt at speech, could find nothing better to do than
to drop her veil once more and cry under it. It was very hard, but she
was not quite unaccustomed to it. However, the discoveries of the day
were important enough to prevent the immediate departure which Miss
Leonora had intended. She wrote a note with her own hands to her
nephew, asking him to dinner. "We meant to have gone away to-day, but
should like to see you first," she said in her note. "Come and
dine--we mayn't have anything pleasant to say, but I don't suppose you
expect that. It's a pity we don't see eye to eye." Such was the
intimation received by Mr Wentworth when he got home, very tired, in
the afternoon. He had been asking himself whether, under the
circumstances, it would not be proper of him to return some books of
Mr Wodehouse's which he had in his possession, of course by way of
breaking off his too familiar, too frequent intercourse. He had been
represen