death. As for Sir
Tom, it was impossible for such a man to remain unmoved by emotion so
great. But it had never occurred to him as possible that Lucy could
resist his will, or, indeed, stand for a moment against his injunction;
he had believed that he had only to say to her, "You must not do it,"
and that she would have cried, but given way. He felt himself utterly
defeated, silenced, put out of consideration. He did nothing but stare
and gasp at her in his consternation; and, more still, he was betrayed.
Her gentleness had deceived him and made him a fool; his pride was
touched, he who was supposed to have no pride. He stood silent for a
time, and then he burst out with a sort of roar of astonished and angry
dismay.

"Lucy, do you mean to tell me that you will disobey me?" he cried.

CHAPTER XIII.

AN IDLE MORNING.

The Dowager Lady Randolph had never found the Hall so dull. There was
nothing going on, nothing even to look forward to: one formal
dinner-party was the only thing to represent that large and cordial
hospitality which she was glad to think had in her own time
characterised the period when the Hall was open. She had never pretended
to be fond of the county society. In the late Sir Robert's time she had
not concealed the fact that the less time she spent in it the better she
was pleased. But when she was there, all the county had known it. She
was a woman who loved to live a large and liberal life. It was not so
much that she liked gaiety, or what is called pleasure, as that she
loved to have people about her, to be the dispenser of enjoyment, to
live a life in which there was always something going on. This is a
temperament which meets much censure from the world, and is stigmatised
as a love of excitement, and by many other unlovely names; but that is
hard upon the people who are born with it, and who are in many cases
benefactors to mankind. Lady Randolph's desire was that there should
always be something doing--"a magic lantern at the least," she had said.
Indeed, there can be no doubt that in managing that magic lantern she
would have given as much satisfaction to everybody, and perhaps managed
to enjoy herself as much, as if it had been the first entertainment in
Mayfair. She could not stagnate comfortably, she said; and as so much of
an ordinary woman's life must be stagnation more or less gracefully
veiled, it may be supposed that Lady Randolph had learned the useful
lesson of putting up