friend had not
been conducted in the wisest possible manner. She has done Miss Colwyn
considerable harm."

Lady Ashley glanced at him inquiringly. She was particularly anxious
that he should marry Margaret Adair.

"Is Lady Caroline at home?" her son asked, after another and a longer
pause.

"Yes. She came home yesterday--with dear Margaret. I am sure, Philip,
that Margaret does not know it if she has done harm."

"I don't suppose she does, mother. I am sure she would not willingly
injure any one. But I think that she ought to know the circumstances of
the case."

And then he opened a book and began to read.

Lady Ashley never remonstrated. But she raised her eyebrows a little
over this expression of Sir Philip's opinion. If he were going to try to
tutor Margaret Adair, whose slightest wish had never yet known
contradiction, she thought it probable that the much-wished for marriage
would never take place at all.

CHAPTER XV.

A BONE OF CONTENTION.

Poor Janetta, plodding away at her music lessons and doing the household
work of her family, never guessed that she was about to become a bone of
contention. But such she was fated to be, and that between persons no
less distinguished than Lady Caroline Adair and Sir Philip Ashley--not
to speak of Sir Philip and Margaret!

Two days after Janetta's unexpected meeting with Sir Philip, that
gentleman betook himself to Helmsley Court in a somewhat warm and
indignant mood. He had seen a good deal of Margaret during the autumn
months. They had been members of the same house-party in more than one
great Scottish mansion: they had boated together, fished together,
driven and ridden and walked together, until more than one of Lady
Caroline's acquaintances had asked, with a covert smile, "how soon she
might be allowed to congratulate".... The sentence was never quite
finished, and Lady Caroline never made any very direct reply. Margaret
was too young to think of these things, she said. But other people were
very ready to think of them for her.

The acquaintance had therefore progressed a long way since the day of
Margaret's return from school. And yet it had not gone quite so far as
onlookers surmised, or as Lady Caroline wished. Sir Philip was most
friendly, most attentive, but he was also somewhat absurdly unconscious
of remark. His character had a simplicity which occasionally set people
wondering. He was perfectly frank and manly: he spoke without
_arriere-p