e I
have no patience with her."

"Where did your father go?"

"He went over to Port-Graham. He suddenly bethought him of a lease--I
think it was a lease--he ought to have sent off by post, and he was so
eager about it that he started without saying good-bye. And Mark,--what
of him and Alice?"

"There's all the information I can give you;" and she handed her a card
with one line in pencil: "Good-bye till evening, Bella. You, were asleep
when I came in.--Alice."

"How charmingly mysterious! And you have no idea where they 've gone?"

"Not the faintest; except, perhaps, back to the Abbey for some costumes
that they wanted for that 'great tableau.'"

"I don't think so," said she, bluntly. "I suspect--shall I tell you what
I suspect? But it's just as likely you 'll be angry, for you Lyles will
never hear anything said of one of you. Yes, you may smile, my dear, but
it's well known, and I 'm not the first who has said it."

"If that be true, Beck, it were best not to speak of people who are so
excessively thin-skinned."

"I don't know that. I don't see why you are to be indulged any more than
your neighbors. I suppose every one must take his share of that sort of
thing."

Bella merely smiled, and Rebecca continued: "What I was going to say
was this,--and, of course, you are at liberty to dissent from it if you
like,--that, however clever a tactician your sister is, Sally and I
saw her plan of campaign at once. Yes, dear, if you had been at dinner
yesterday you 'd have heard a very silly project thrown out about my
being sent over to fetch Tony Butler, under the escort of Mr. Norman
Maitland. Not that it would have shocked me, or frightened me in the
least,--I don't pretend that; but as Mr. Maitland had paid me certain
attention at Lyle Abbey,--you look quite incredulous, my dear, but it
is simply the fact; and so having, as I said, made these advances to me,
there would have been considerable awkwardness in our going off together
a drive of several hours without knowing--without any understanding--"
She hesitated for the right word, and Bella added, "_A quoi s'en tenir_,
in fact."

"I don't know exactly what that means, Bella; but, in plain English, I
wished to be sure of what he intended. My dear child, though that smile
becomes you vastly, it also seems to imply that you are laughing at my
extreme simplicity, or my extreme vanity, or both."

Bella's smile faded slowly away; but a slight motion of the angle of