lonel out of the house, and watched him
out of the village. When the Colonel was fairly started, Mr. Bozzle
walked back to Lessboro'.

CHAPTER XXII.

SHEWING HOW MISS STANBURY BEHAVED TO HER TWO NIECES.

[Illustration]

The triumph of Miss Stanbury when she received her niece's letter was
certainly very great,--so great that in its first flush she could not
restrain herself from exhibiting it to Dorothy. "Well,--well,--what
do you think, Dolly?"

"About what, aunt? I don't know who the letter is from."

"Nobody writes to me now so constant as your sister Priscilla. The
letter is from Priscilla. Colonel Osborne has been at the Clock
House, after all. I knew that he would be there. I knew it! I knew
it!"

Dorothy, when she heard this, was dumbfounded. She had rested her
defence of her mother and sister on the impossibility of any such
visit being admitted. According to her lights the coming of Colonel
Osborne, after all that had been said, would be like the coming of
Lucifer himself. The Colonel was, to her imagination, a horrible
roaring lion. She had no idea that the erratic manoeuvres of such
a beast might be milder and more innocent than the wooing of any
turtle-dove. She would have asked whether the roaring lion had gone
away again, and, if so, whether he had taken his prey with him,
were it not that she was too much frightened at the moment to ask
any question. That her mother and sister should have been wilfully
concerned in such iniquity was quite incredible to her, but yet she
did not know how to defend them. "But are you quite sure of it, Aunt
Stanbury? May there not be another mistake?"

"No mistake this time, I think, my dear. Any way, Priscilla says that
he is there." Now in this there was a mistake. Priscilla had said
nothing of the kind.

"You don't mean that he is staying at the Clock House, Aunt
Stanbury?"

"I don't know where he is now. I'm not his keeper. And, I'm glad to
say, I'm not the lady's keeper either. Ah, me! It's a bad business.
You can't touch pitch and not be defiled, my dear. If your mother
wanted the Clock House, I would sooner have taken it for her myself
than that all this should have happened,--for the family's sake."

But Miss Stanbury, when she was alone, and when she had read her
niece's three letters again and again, began to understand something
of Priscilla's honesty, and began also to perceive that there might
have been a great difficulty respecting the