ought him?"

"He has gone into the school with your papa to see Mr. Peacocke. He
always was very fond of Mr. Peacocke." For a moment something of a feeling
of jealousy crossed her heart,--but only for a moment. He would not
surely have come to Bowick if he had begun to be indifferent to her
already! "Papa says that he will probably stay to dinner."

"Then I am to see him?"

"Yes;--of course you must see him."

"I didn't know, mamma."

"Don't you wish to see him?"

"Oh yes, mamma. If he were to come and go, and we were not to meet at
all, I should think it was all over then. Only,--I don't know what to say
to him."

"You must take that as it comes, my dear."

Two hours afterwards they were walking, the two of them alone together,
out in the Bowick woods. When once the law,--which had been rather
understood than spoken,--had been infringed and set at naught, there was
no longer any use in endeavouring to maintain a semblance of its
restriction. The two young people had met in the presence both of the
father and mother, and the lover had had her in his arms before either of
them could interfere. There had been a little scream from Mary, but it
may probably be said of her that she was at the moment the happiest young
lady in the diocese.

"Does your father know you are here?" said the Doctor, as he led the young
lord back from the school into the house.

"He knows I'm coming, for I wrote and told my mother. I always tell
everything; but it's sometimes best to make up your mind before you get an
answer." Then the Doctor made up his mind that Lord Carstairs would have
his own way in anything that he wished to accomplish.

"Won't the Earl be angry?" Mrs. Wortle asked.

"No;--not angry. He knows the world too well not to be quite sure that
something of the kind would happen. And he is too fond of his son not to
think well of anything that he does. It wasn't to be supposed that they
should never meet. After all that has passed I am bound to make him
welcome if he chooses to come here, and as Mary's lover to give him the
best welcome that I can. He won't stay, I suppose, because he has got no
clothes."

"But he has;--John brought in a portmanteau and a dressing-bag out of the
gig." So that was settled.

In the mean time Lord Carstairs had taken Mary out for a walk into the
wood, and she, as she walked beside him, hardly knew whether she was going
on her head or her heels. This, indeed, it was t