half seriously.
'Ah, you mustn't believe all Emily tells you.'

'Oh, she hasn't told me that herself, but I'm quite sure she would be
offended if any one thought her capable of such frivolity.'

'Emily will keep it to herself till the wedding-day,' said Geraldine,
with a mocking shake of the bead. 'She isn't one to go telling her
secrets.'

At this point Hood made his appearance. His wife paid no heed to him as
he entered; Emily glanced at him furtively. He had the look of a man who
has predetermined an attitude of easy good-humour, nor had the parting
with Cheeseman failed to prove an occasion for fresh recourse to that
fiery adjuvant which of a sudden was become indispensable to him. Want
of taste for liquor and lifelong habit of abstemiousness had hitherto
kept Hood the soberest of men; he could not remember to have felt the
warm solace of a draught taken for solace' sake since the days when
Cheeseman had been wont to insist upon the glass of gin at their
meetings, and then it had never gone beyond the single glass, for he
felt that his head was weak, and dreaded temptation. Four-and-twenty
hours had wrought such a change in him, that already to enter a
public-house seemed a familiar act, and he calculated upon the courage
to be begotten of a smoking tumbler. Previously the mere outlay would
have made him miserable, but the command of unearned coin was affecting
him as it is wont to affect poor men. The new aid given to Cheeseman
left a few shillings out of the second broken sovereign. Let the two
pounds--he said to himself--be regarded as gone; eight remained
untouched. For the odd shillings, let them serve odd expenses. So when
he had purchased Cheeseman's ticket to King's Gross, he was free with
small change at the station bar. At the last moment it occurred to him
that he might save himself a walk by going in the train as far as
Pendal. So it was here that the final parting had taken place.

He seated himself with his legs across a chair, and began to talk to
Geraldine of the interesting news which Jessie had just whispered to him
when they met on the road. The character of his remarks was not quite
what it would have been a day or two ago; he joked with more freedom
than was his custom. Studiously he avoided the eyes of his wife and
daughter. He declined to sit up to the table, but drank a cup of tea
with his hands resting on the back of a chair.

The Cartwright sisters were anxious to use the evening for