to your game. You'll be late
for dinner, girls, if you don't look sharp."

"We're not coming up this evening, sir," said Bell.

"And why not?"

"We're going to stay with mamma."

"And why will not your mother come with you? I'll be whipped if I
can understand it. One would have thought that under the present
circumstances she would have been glad to see you all as much
together as possible."

"We're together quite enough," said Lily. "And as for mamma, I
suppose she thinks--" And then she stopped herself, catching the
glance of Bell's imploring eye. She was going to make some indignant
excuse for her mother, some excuse which would be calculated to make
her uncle angry. It was her practice to say such sharp words to him,
and consequently he did not regard her as warmly as her more silent
and more prudent sister. At the present moment he turned quickly
round and went into the house; and then, with a very few words of
farewell, the two young men followed him. The girls went back over
the little bridge by themselves, feeling that the afternoon had not
gone off altogether well.

"You shouldn't provoke him, Lily," said Bell.

"And he shouldn't say those things about mamma. It seems to me that
you don't mind what he says."

"Oh, Lily."

"No more you do. He makes me so angry that I cannot hold my tongue.
He thinks that because all the place is his, he is to say just what
he likes. Why should mamma go up there to please his humours?"

"You may be sure that mamma will do what she thinks best. She is
stronger-minded than Uncle Christopher, and does not want any one to
help her. But, Lily, you shouldn't speak as though I were careless
about mamma. You didn't mean that, I know."

"Of course I didn't." Then the two girls joined their mother in their
own little domain; but we will return to the men at the Great House.

Crosbie, when he went up to dress for dinner, fell into one of those
melancholy fits of which I have spoken. Was he absolutely about to
destroy all the good that he had done for himself throughout the past
years of his hitherto successful life? or rather, as he at last put
the question to himself more strongly,--was it not the case that
he had already destroyed all that success? His marriage with Lily,
whether it was to be for good or bad, was now a settled thing, and
was not regarded as a matter admitting of any doubt. To do the man
justice, I must declare that in all these moments of misery he still