ed, "men have only one alternative--they must keep
out of the way." She looked again at Emily, more pointedly than ever.

Even gentle Cecilia resented this. "Whom do you refer to?" she said
sharply.

"My dear!" Emily remonstrated, "need you ask?" She glanced at Francine
as she spoke, and then gave the dog his signal. He tossed up the sugar,
and caught it in his mouth. His audience applauded him--and so, for that
time, the skirmish ended.

Among the letters of the next morning's delivery, arrived Alban's reply.
Emily's anticipations proved to be correct. The drawing-master's du ties
would not permit him to leave Netherwoods; and he, like Mirabel, sent
his apologies. His short letter to Emily contained no further allusion
to Miss Jethro; it began and ended on the first page.

Had he been disappointed by the tone of reserve in which Emily had
written to him, under Mr. Wyvil's advice? Or (as Cecilia suggested) had
his detention at the school so bitterly disappointed him that he was too
disheartened to write at any length? Emily made no attempt to arrive at
a conclusion, either one way or the other. She seemed to be in depressed
spirits; and she spoke superstitiously, for the first time in Cecilia's
experience of her.

"I don't like this reappearance of Miss Jethro," she said. "If the
mystery about that woman is ever cleared up, it will bring trouble
and sorrow to me--and I believe, in his own secret heart, Alban Morris
thinks so too."

"Write, and ask him," Cecilia suggested.

"He is so kind and so unwilling to distress me," Emily answered, "that
he wouldn't acknowledge it, even if I am right."

In the middle of the week, the course of private life at Monksmoor
suffered an interruption--due to the parliamentary position of the
master of the house.

The insatiable appetite for making and hearing speeches, which
represents one of the marked peculiarities of the English race
(including their cousins in the United States), had seized on Mr.
Wyvil's constituents. There was to be a political meeting at the market
hall, in the neighboring town; and the member was expected to make an
oration, passing in review contemporary events at home and abroad. "Pray
don't think of accompanying me," the good man said to his guests. "The
hall is badly ventilated, and the speeches, including my own, will not
be worth hearing."

This humane warning was ungratefully disregarded. The gentlemen were all
interested in "the objects of the