ase is out. I have been told that he is a sporting friend of the
Dean's. It seems to me that you have, all of you, got into a nice mess
here by yourselves. All I want you to understand is that I cannot now
trouble myself about you."

"You don't mean to give us up," said the afflicted mother. "You'll come
and see me sometimes, won't you?"

"Certainly not, if I am to be insulted by my sister."

"I have insulted no one," said Lady Sarah, haughtily.

"It was no insult to tell me that I ought to have stayed in Italy, and
not have come to my own house!"

"Sarah, you ought not to have said that," exclaimed the Marchioness.

"He complained that everything here was uncomfortable, and therefore I
said it. He knows that I did not speak of his return in any other
sense. Since he settled himself abroad there has not been a day on
which I have not wished that he would come back to his own house and
his own duties. If he will treat us properly, no one will treat him
with higher consideration than I. But we have our own rights as well as
he, and are as well able to guard them."

"Sarah can preach as well as ever," he said.

"Oh! my children,--oh! my children!" sobbed the old lady.

"I have had about enough of this. I knew what it would be when you
wrote to me to come to you." Then he took up his hat, as though he were
going.

"And am I to see nothing more of you?" asked his mother.

"I will come to you, mother,--once a-week if you wish it. Every Sunday
afternoon will be as good a time as any other. But I will not come
unless I am assured of the absence of Lady Sarah. I will not subject
myself to her insolence, nor put myself in the way of being annoyed by
a ballyragging quarrel."

"I and my sisters are always at Church on Sunday afternoons," said Lady
Sarah.

In this way the matter was arranged, and then the Marquis took himself
off. For some time after he left the room the Marchioness sat in
silence, sobbing now and again, and then burying her face in her
handkerchief. "I wish we had gone away when he told us," she said, at
last.

"No, mamma," said her eldest daughter. "No,--certainly no. Even though
all this is very miserable, it is not so bad as running away in order
that we might be out of his way. No good can ever be got by yielding in
what is wrong to any one. This is your house; and as yours it is ours."

"Oh, yes."

"And here we can do something to justify our lives. We have a work
appointed to us which we