n, I think the likeliest thing is that he has made up his
quarrel and gone home.'

'I can easily determine that question by looking over the shipping
lists.'

'Perhaps not,' said Mr. Dallas, rubbing his chin. 'If he has gone, I
think it will have been under another name. The one he bore here was, I
suspect, assumed.'

'What for?' demanded Pitt somewhat sharply.

'Reasons of family pride, no doubt. That is enough to make men do
foolisher things.'

'It would be difficult to find a foolisher thing to do,' replied his
son. But then the conversation turned. It had given Miss Betty
something to think of. She drew her own conclusions without asking
anybody. And in some indefinite, inscrutable way it stimulated and
confirmed her desire for the game Mrs. Dallas had begged her to play.
Human hearts are certainly strange things. What were the Gainsboroughs
to Miss Betty Frere? Nothing in the world, half an hour before; now?
Now there was a vague suspicion of an enemy somewhere; a scent of
rivalry in the air; an immediate rising of partisanship. Were these the
people of whom Mrs. Dallas was afraid? against whom she craved help?
She should have help. Was it not even a meritorious thing, to withdraw
a young man from untoward influences, and keep him in the path marked
out by his mother?

Miss Frere scented a battle like Job's war-horse. In spirit, that is;
outwardly, nothing could show less signs of war. She was equal to Pitt,
in her seeming careless apartness; the difference was, that with her it
_was_ seeming, and with him reality. She lost not a word; she failed
not to observe and regard every movement; she knew, without being seen
to look, just what his play of feature and various expressions were;
all the while she was calmly embroidering, or idly gazing out of the
window, or skilfully playing chess with Mr. Dallas, whom she inevitably
beat.

Pitt, the while, his mother thought (and so thought the young lady
herself), was provokingly careless of her attractions. He was going
hither and thither; over the farm with his father; about the village,
to see the changes and look up his old acquaintances; often, too, busy
in his room where he had been wont to spend so many hours in the old
time. He was graver than he used to be; with the manner of a man, and a
thoughtful one; he showed not the least inclination to amuse himself
with his mother's elegant visitor. Mrs. Dallas became as nearly fidgety
as it was in her nature to be