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the other night so unconscionably late?" Bell and Lily both assured her that their mother was none the worse for what she had gone through; and then Mrs Eames got up and left the room, with the declared purpose of looking for John and Mary, but bent, in truth, on the production of some cake and sweet wine which she kept under lock and key in the little parlour. "Don't let's stay here very long," whispered Crosbie. "No, not very long," said Lily. "But when you come to see my friends you mustn't be in a hurry, Mr Crosbie." "He had his turn with Lady Julia," said Bell, "and we must have ours now." "At any rate, Mrs Eames won't tell us to do our duty and to beware of being too beautiful," said Lily. Mary and John came into the room before their mother returned; then came Mrs Eames, and a few minutes afterwards the cake and wine arrived. It certainly was rather dull, as none of the party seemed to be at their ease. The grandeur of Mr Crosbie was too great for Mrs Eames and her daughter, and John was almost silenced by the misery of his position. He had not yet answered Miss Roper's letter, nor had he even made up his mind whether he would answer it or no. And then the sight of Lily's happiness did not fill him with all that friendly joy which he should perhaps have felt as the friend of her childhood. To tell the truth, he hated Crosbie, and so he had told himself; and had so told his sister also very frequently since the day of the party. "I tell you what it is, Molly," he had said, "if there was any way of doing it, I'd fight that man." "What; and make Lily wretched?" "She'll never be happy with him. I'm sure she won't. I don't want to do her any harm, but yet I'd like to fight that man,--if I only knew how to manage it." And then he bethought himself that if they could both be slaughtered in such an encounter it would be the only fitting termination to the present state of things. In that way, too, there would be an escape from Amelia, and, at the present moment, he saw none other. When he entered the room he shook hands with all the party from Allington, but, as he told his sister afterwards, his flesh crept when he touched Crosbie. Crosbie, as he contemplated the Eames family sitting stiff and ill at ease in their own drawing-room chairs, made up his mind that it would be well that his wife should see as little of John Eames as might be when she came to London;--not that he was in any way jealous
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