day!'

'I do. About that.'

'Very warm intercourse!'

'I don't know; not necessarily,' said young Dallas. 'The classics are
rather cool--and Numismatics refreshing and composing.'

'Numismatics! You are not teaching that child Numismatics, I suppose?'

'She is teaching me.'

Mrs. Dallas was silent now, with a dissatisfied expression. Her husband
repeated his former remark.

'She's a handsome little maid. Are you teaching her, Pitt?'

'A little, sir.'

'What, pray? if I may ask.'

'Teaching her to support existence. It about comes to that.'

'I do not understand you, I confess. You are oracular.'

'I did not understand _her_, until lately. It is what nobody else does,
by the way.'

'Why should not anybody else understand her?' Mrs. Dallas asked.

'Should,--but they do not. That's a common case, you know, mother.'

'She has her father; what's the matter with him?'

'He thinks a good deal is the matter with him.'

'Regularly hipped,' said the elder Dallas. 'He has never held up his
head since his wife died. He fancies he is going after her as fast as
he can go. Perhaps he is; such fancies are often fatal.'

'It would do him good to look after his child,' Mrs. Dallas said.

'I wish you would put that in his head, mother.'

'Does he _not_ look after her?'

'In a sort of way. He knows where she is and where she goes; he has a
sort of outward care of her, and so far it is very particular care; but
there it stops.'

'She ought to be sent to school.'

'There is no school here fit for her.'

'Then she should be sent away, where there _is_ a school fit for her.'

'Tell the colonel so.'

'I shall not meddle in Colonel Gainsborough's affairs,' said Mrs.
Dallas, bridling a little; 'he is able to manage them himself; or he
thinks he is, which comes to the same thing. But I should say, that
child might better be in any other hands than his.'

'Well, she is not shut up to them,' said young Dallas, 'since I have
taken her in hand.'

He strolled out of the room as he spoke, and the two elder people were
left together. Silence reigned between them till the sound of his steps
had quite ceased to be heard.

Mrs. Dallas was working at some wool embroidery, and taking her
stitches with a thoughtful brow; her husband in his easy-chair was
carelessly turning over the pages of a newspaper. They were a contrast.
She had a tall, commanding figure, a gracious but dignified manner, and
a very handsome, stately fa