slowly, Mr. Carradyne talking by her side.

For some months now their love dream had been going on; aye, and the
love-making too. Not altogether surreptitiously; neither of them would
have liked that. Though not expedient to proclaim it yet to Captain Monk
and the world, Mrs. Carradyne knew of it and tacitly sanctioned it.

Alice West turned her face, blushing uncomfortably, to him as they
walked. "I am glad to have this opportunity of saying something to you,"
she spoke with hesitation. "Are you not upon rather bad terms with Mrs.
Hamlyn?"

"She is with me," replied Harry.

"And--am _I_ the cause?" continued Alice, feeling as if her fears were
confirmed.

"Not at all. She has not fathomed the truth yet, with all her
penetration, though she may have some suspicion of it. Eliza wants to
bend me to her will in the matter of the house, and I won't be bent. Old
Peveril wishes to resign the lease of Peacock Range to me; I wish to
take it from him, and Eliza objects. She says Peveril promised her the
house until the seven years' lease was out, and that she means to keep
him to his bargain."

"Do you quarrel?"

"Quarrel! no," laughed Harry Carradyne. "I joke with her, rather than
quarrel. But I don't give in. She pays me some left-handed compliments,
telling me that I am no gentleman, that I'm a bear, and so on; to which
I make my bow."

Alice West was gazing straight before her, a troubled look in her eyes.
"Then you see that I _am_ the remote cause of the quarrel, Harry. But
for thinking of me, you would not care to take the house on your own
hands."

"I don't know that. Be very sure of one thing, Alice: that I shall not
stay an hour longer under the roof here if my uncle disinherits me. That
he, a man of indomitable will, should be so long making up his mind is a
proof that he shrinks from committing the injustice. The suspense it
keeps me in is the worst of all. I told him so the other evening when we
were sitting together and he was in an amiable mood. I said that any
decision he might come to would be more tolerable than this prolonged
suspense."

Alice drew a long breath at his temerity.

Harry laughed. "Indeed, I quite expected to be ordered out of the room
in a storm. Instead of that, he took it quietly, civilly telling me to
have a little more patience; and then began to speak of the annual new
year's dinner, which is not far off now."

"Mrs. Carradyne is thinking that he may not hold the dinner this