to see her; I would not miss the shock to Honor. No, don't show
it to her! I won't have any preparation.'

'Do you call that preparation?' said Owen, coming up, and taking up the
photograph indignantly. 'You should not do such things, Cilly!'

''Tisn't I that do them--it's Phoebe's brother--the one in the sky I
mean, Dan Phoebus, and if he won't flatter, I can't help it. No, no,
I'll not have it broken; it is an exact likeness of all the children's
spotted frocks, and if it be not of Edna, it ought to be.'

'Look, Robert,' said Phoebe, as she saw him standing shy, grave, and
monumental, with nervous hands clasped over the back of a chair, neither
advancing nor retreating, 'what a beautiful place this is!'

'Oh! that's from a print--Glendalough! I mean to bring you plenty of the
real place.'

'Kathleen's Cave,' said the unwelcome millionaire.

'Yes, with a comment on Kathleen's awkwardness! I should like to see the
hermit who could push me down.'

'You! You'll never tread in Kathleen's steps!'

'Because I shan't find a hermit in the cave.'

'Talk of skylarking on "the lake whose gloomy shore!"' They all laughed
except the two Fulmorts.

'There's a simpler reason,' said one of the Guardsmen, 'namely, that
neither party will be there at all.'

'No, not the saint--'

'Nor the lady. Miss Charteris tells me all the maiden aunts are come up
from the country.' (How angry Phoebe was!)

'Happily it is an article I don't possess.'

'Well, we will not differ about technicalities, as long as the fact is
the same. You'll remember my words when you are kept on a diet of Hannah
More and Miss Edgeworth till you shall have abjured hounds, balls, and
salmon-flies.'

'The woman lives not who has the power!'

'What bet will you take, Miss Sandbrook?'

'What bet will you take, Lord William, that, maiden aunts and all, I
appear on the 3rd, in a dress of salmon-flies?'

'A hat trimmed with goose feathers to a pocket-handkerchief, that by that
time you are in the family mansion, repenting of your sins.'

Phoebe looked on like one in a dream, while the terms of the wager were
arranged with playful precision. She did not know that dinner had been
announced, till she found people moving, and in spite of her antipathy to
Mr. Calthorp, she rejoiced to find him assigned to herself--dear, good
Lucy must have done it to keep Robin to herself, and dear, good Lucy she
shall be, in spite of the salmon, since in the prog