the
mouth showed that it was not without an effort she was grave.

"I am quite aware," resumed Beck, "that it requires some credulity to
believe that one like myself could have attracted any notice when seen
in the same company with Alice Lyle--Trafford, I mean--and her sister;
but the caprice of men, my dear, will explain anything. At all events,
the fact is there, whether one can explain it or not; and, to prove it,
papa spoke to Mr. Maitland on the morning we came away from the Abbey;
but so hurriedly--for the car was at the door, and we were seated on
it--that all he could manage to say was, that if Mr. Maitland would come
over to Port-Graham and satisfy him on certain points,--the usual ones,
I suppose,--that--that, in short, the matter was one which did not offer
insurmountable obstacles. All this sounds very strange to your ears, my
dear, but it is strictly true, every word of it."

"I cannot doubt whatever you tell me," said Bella; and now she spoke
with a very marked gravity.

"Away we went," said Rebecca, who had now got into the sing-song tone of
a regular narrator,--"away we went, our first care on getting back home
being to prepare for Mr. Maitland's visit. We got the little green-room
ready, and cleared everything out of the small store-closet at the back,
and broke open a door between the two so as to make a dressing-room for
him, and we had it neatly papered, and made it really very nice. We put
up that water-colored sketch of Sally and myself making hay, and papa
leaning over the gate; and the little drawing of papa receiving the
French commander's sword on the quarter-deck of the 'Malabar:' in fact,
it was as neat as could be,--but he never came. No, my dear,--never."

"How was that?"

"You shall hear; that is, you shall hear what followed, for explanation
I have none to give you. Mr. Maitland was to have come over, on the
Wednesday following, to dinner. Papa said five, and he promised to be
punctual; but he never came, nor did he send one line of apology.
This may be some new-fangled politeness,--the latest thing in that
fashionable world he lives in,--but still I cannot believe it is
practised by well-bred people. Be that as it may, my dear, we never
saw him again till yesterday, when he passed us in your sister's
fine carriage-and-four, he lolling back this way, and making a little
gesture, so, with his hand as he swept past, leaving us in a cloud of
dust that totally precluded him from seeing