hat Sylla's nerves were shaken by her fall. She rode as
boldly as at first at everything her Mentor allowed; but she was in a
strange country, and compelled, whether she liked it or not, to trust
herself to Jim Bloxam's guidance.

"Now," she exclaimed, "you have come very nearly to the end of your
responsibilities, Captain Bloxam. You have only, if possible, to
smuggle me into the rectory; and remember--I swear you both to secresy."

"I can take you," replied Jim, "by a bridle-path through the wood,
which will in all probability insure your reaching the rectory grounds
unnoticed; but your getting into the house I must leave to your own
ingenuity."

When, in the course of the evening, Jim, in his own impetuous fashion,
told that he had asked the Chipchase girls to come up to the Grange the
next evening, with a view to charades and an impromptu valse or two,
Lady Mary received the intelligence with the calm resignation of a
follower of Mahomet. She saw it was hopeless attempting any further to
control the march of events.

"No," she murmured confidentially to Mr. Cottrell in the drawing-room,
"the Fates are against me. I have done all that woman could, but I
cannot contend with destiny. It is sad; but whatever with due
forethought I propose, destiny, embodied in the shape of that wretch
Jim, persistently thwarts. There is no such thing as instilling the
slightest tact into him."

"But, my dear Lady Mary," rejoined Cottrell, whose sense of the
humorous was again highly gratified by the outcome of the trip to
Trotbury, "I really cannot see that you have any cause for complaint.
Things look to me progressing very favourably in the direction you
wish."

"My dear Pansey," replied her ladyship, solemnly, "you do not
understand these things _quite so well_ as I thought you did. A
variety of belles disturbs concentration, and prevents that earnestness
of purpose which is so highly desirable."

"I see," rejoined Pansey, laughing. "To revert to the metaphor you
used in our conversation some days since, you object to a peal of
belles. Your doctrine may be embodied in the formula, I presume, of
one belle and one ringer."

"Yes," rejoined her ladyship, smiling, "that about describes it. And
now I think it is about bed-time. Jim, my dear," she continued, as she
took her bed-room candle, "as you have thought fit to improvise a ball,
you had better take care that the young ladies have partners by asking
three or fou