for myself. After all, if he likes the girl and the old ruffian gives her a good dowry? But it will not be equal to Julia Manley's. Only, if Syd has set his mind on her, and I have no good excuse, I know him well enough; he'll marry her in the teeth of everything, and then there will be the devil to pay!"

On which he drank yet another glass of claret; then crossed the hall and went into the drawing-room.

Mrs. Lowe was lying on the sofa, comfortably packed up and half, asleep.

"My dear!" said her husband in a high key.

"Yes, Colonel!" she answered with a start.

"I do believe you were asleep again, Matilda!" he said tartly.

Asleep! What nonsense! when you know I never sleep!" was her reply made peevishly.

It was an old battle-ground between them, and the weapons were never suffered to grow rusty by disuse.

"I think we will have a dinner-party, Matilda," said the Colonel, stirring the fire.

"A dinner-party!" she echoed.

"Did I not speak plainly, my dear? I said a dinner-party; and I meant a dinner-party," returned the Colonel; the accompaniment of falling coals lending a curiously warlike clang to his words.

"Yes, Colonel, certainly. Who are they to be?" said Mrs. Lowe, with that air of frightened submission which always irritated her husband. It is only fair to her to say that an air of anything else would have irritated him just as much.

"Let me see. Suppose we say the Rector and Mrs. Borrodaile, Fletcher and his sister, the Collinsons, Dr. Wickham, and the Hamleys. There's a new girl there; Mrs. Hamley's niece-Reginald's daughter I imagine she must be the Captain never married. We'll have her out, and see what she is like."

Mrs. Lowe repeated the names.

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Yes; fourteen with ourselves.

"That makes eleven," she said.

Seven of a sort," said Colonel

Lowe. "Nobody likely to take anybody else by the throat, and two pretty girls as the enliveners among you old women. So perhaps you will write the notes at once, my dear; and John can take them round. This day fortnight—January the 3rd-unless you are too sleepy."

"How fond you are of saying disagreeable things!" said poor Mrs. Lowe in her ill-used tone, as she slowly unpacked herself from her comfortable nest of shawls and pillows and went shivering and tumbled to her davenport.

But she dared not remonstrate. Colonel Lowe was not the man to sleep on a project; and when he began to stir the whole house must be up and doing. It was always taking time by the forelock with him. and striking while the iron was hot; and his thoughts and plans were

full-grown Minervas, matured at their birth and never needing nursing. So the notes were written and the servant sent out with them on the instant; for all that it was a damp, dark, unpleasant night in December, and to-morrow morning would have done just as well. But to men like Colonel Lowe servants are only animated machines who have to do as they are commanded, and who are not allowed the effeminacy of taking cold in bad weather or of feeling fatigue after hard work. If he had brought nothing else with him out of the army he had brought the habit of command; and there was not a living creature about Cragfoot who did not recognise the master's hand when he raised it-save Sydney; and even with him there were conditions and barriers he could not pass; if few, yet immovable. And one of these was he must marry money or he must accept disinheritance.

CHAPTER XI.

DILEMMAS.

THE invitation to Cragfoot came to Abbey Holme just as Dora and Mr. Hamley were settling to their evening bézique. Mrs. Hamley was not playing to-night. She was deep in a quarterly article on the latest book of scandalous chronicles, where all the highly-spiced bits were extracted fenced about by an editorial padding of reprehension; by which means was accomplished that feat, so dear to English respectability, of enjoying impropriety under the pretext of condemnation. "An invitation to Cragfoot!"' said Mrs. Hamley, with a perceptible "How strangely even people who should be well-bred forget themselves! As if Patricia or myself could possibly go out in our first mourning! For you are specially asked too, Patricia, though they have not called on you yet. Odd manners for Lady Graham's daughter, to say the least of it!"

sneer.

"I do not want people to call on me, and I do not want to go out to dinner," said Patricia hastily.

"Don't be silly," returned Mrs. Hamley sharply. "And don't be affected. Of course you will have to go out like any other person when your first mourning is over. I hate these pretences of being unlike other people; and you are far too fond, Patricia, of posing yourself as something special and peculiar, and, I suppose, something better than any one else."

"And

"I did not mean it as a pretence or affectation," said Patricia. "Yes, you did; and do not contradict," snapped her aunt. I would make you go now, only it would be absurd in your deep crape. And she ought to have remembered this, silly little woman! That eternal catarrh of hers seems to have really softened her brain."

Fortunately for Dora the name of Sydney Lowe's mother was not mentioned.

"What is all the row about, Lady?" asked Mr. Hamley in his rolling, unctuous voice, with his terminal h's and odd mixture of pomposity and vulgarity.

She looked at him with cold annoyance; when she was displeased, no one was right and Mr. Hamley more often wrong than another. Then after a pause she told him—an invitation on the third to Cragfoot, for all of them; adding, "Of course we cannot accept."

"No ?" he said, dealing his cards leisurely, but dealing three instead of two. "Cannot Dora and I go as your representatives ?-unworthy ones, I admit—but just to carry the flag for Abbey Holme, and show the neighbours that we are alive?"

"If you like to make a marked division in the house, yes," said Mrs. Hamley coldly.

"Not to annoy you, Lady," said Mr. Hamley, throwing away his bézique knave.

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No, not for worlds," echoed Dora, who had been warned by a touch from her partner's foot that she was to "follow his lead," and "back him up."

"I really do not care a snuff about it. It was only for the credit of the house," said Mr. Hamley. "Royal marriage, Dora, forty."

"And I am sure I do not, dear," said Dora, looking at Mrs. Hamley sweetly. "It is awfully cold too, turning out at night to drive a full mile!" shrugging her shoulders with a shiver.

"To drive a full mile!" echoed Mrs. Hamley crossly; none of these well-bred people had learnt the little politeness of not repeating foregone phrases. "And what of that? When we were girls we thought nothing of walking to Cragfoot in Lady Graham's time. I don't know what the girls of the present day are coming to with their indolence and inability to exert themselves. And you are as bad, Dora, as any of them."

Patricia looked and listened with her big eyes wide open, and her astonishment at this new view of her aunt's visible on her face. Remembering the frequent lectures which her own unladylike vigour had drawn down on her head, how her strength and hardihood had been counted to her as sins, she wondered where the right line was drawn and what was the exact amount of energy allowed before it became vulgarity, and where ladylike delicacy ended and reprehensible selfindulgence began.

"But Dora is too delicate to walk out at night!" she said in eager apology. "She would catch cold with the night air. Why! she does not go out enough in the daytime even!"

"My dear niece," said Mrs. Hamley in her most freezing tones, and with her most elaborate politeness, "oblige me by not interfering in matters which do not concern you. Miss Drummond and I can settle the business between us without your assistance. Now, Dora, if you

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will give me a moment's attention—that is, if you can abstract yourself from your ridiculous game-perhaps you will have the kindness to say whether you wish to go to this dinner or not ?"

Again Mr. Hamley touched her foot.

"I wish to do just as you and Mr. Hamley like, dear," said Dora cheerfully.

"That is no answer; yes or no, if you please."

"If Mr. Hamley likes to go "-she hesitated with an appealing look. Mr. Hamley, still making signs under the table, kept his eyes on his cards, taking no part in the discussion.

"Mr. Hamley can answer for himself," said his wife, compressing her lips. "We will come to Mr. Hamley by-and-by. I have only to deal with you at this present moment. Do you wish to go to Cragfoot to dine on this day fortnight, or do you not? Quick, if you please; the messenger is waiting."

"If you were going, dear, I should like it," stammered Dora.

"But I am not going," said Mrs. Hamley; and paused for a decision.

"I think I would like it, then," said Dora with her eyes down, knowing too well that the authorities whom she made it the business of her life to conciliate equally were in opposition, and that she must offend one which way soever she took. In general, like a wise girl who knows where the staying power as well as the real influence lies, she sided with the wife; but the temptation in this case was more than she could resist; and an evening spent at Sydney's home, with the opportunity of making herself charming to his father and mother, was worth a few days of Mrs. Hamley's ice-bound manner, in her rapid estimate of values. Besides, there was Mr. Hamley's heavy foot under the table, and she knew what that meant too.

"You shall have your wish," said Mrs. Hamley stiffly. “I have no desire to impose my sad mourning on you or Mr. Hamley. The sympathy which is not given freely from the heart is of no value in my eyes; and I am glad you have decided as you have done with such unmistakable candour. Truth is always valuable, even if unflattering.

Dora reddened, but said nothing. Mr. Hamley went on quietly with his game, but took care to score in silence, not calling out his declarations. They knew their world and what was their best wisdom.

But Patricia, who was only honest and who knew nothing but what she saw, cried out in real pain: "Oh, aunt, you misjudge her! Dora does care for you; does sympathise with you! She said herself to me that she felt like the daughter of you both!"

Mr. Hamley's eyes gleamed viciously at this, now at Dora, now at Patricia. Dora looked inexplicably confused. Mrs. Hamley took no notice. She merely half shut her eyes, which made them look some

thing like a cat's, and after much unnecessary trial of pens and paper wrote a long and elaborately-worded note of explanation and regret for her own part and for that of her niece, for the necessity they were under, owing to their recent bereavement, of declining, but ending with the pleasure which Mr. Hamley and Miss Drummond had in accepting Colonel and Mrs. Lowe's polite invitation for Thursday, the 3rd of January. This she folded, directed, sealed-Mrs. Hamley did not patronise stamped and gummed envelopes; and on the instant Patricia, who had been watching her, rang the bell unbidden.

"My dear," said Mrs. Hamley, still with her eyes half shut, showing just a line of cold glitter between the lids, "may I ask you never to do that again? I allow no one to ring the bell in my presence uninvited."

"I beg your pardon, aunt; but I thought it would save time," said Patricia. "It was getting so late for the poor messenger, whoever he is."

"And you are this messenger's care-taker? I thank you for your lesson in humanity, though I was not aware I needed it. I have generally had the character of extreme consideration for others; but it seems we older people know nothing, and you young ones have exclusive possession of the wisdom and the virtue of the world."

Patricia rose and went over to her. She put her young, supple arms about the angular and well-girt body of her aunt, and laid her fresh face against the withered cheek efflorescent with its Bloom of Ninon.

"Dear aunt," she said tenderly, "have patience with me! I want only to please you, and do what is right; but I know that I blunder more often than I succeed. I have been brought up so differently from your ways that I cannot help offending you. But indeed I do not want to vex you. You believe that, do you not, my dear?"

Her grey eyes were full of honest pleading and tender wishes as they looked with pathetic yearning into the hard face that turned itself away from her caress.

"Yes, yes," said Mrs. Hamley irritably. She hated anything like a scene; and to have her moods noticed, save by tacit submission to the course they indicated, was an offence she found it hard to forgive. "I daresay you will improve in time, child; but I must confess you are very trying now; and my poor brother lamentably failed in his duty to you. There, that will do! Don't you see you are crushing my fichu? And, good gracious, Patricia, what a mess you have made of my cap!"

On which she pushed her away angrily; and Patricia felt herself in deeper disgrace than before.

When they went to bed that night Dorastole quietly into Patricia's room. She found her sitting, half undressed, by the uncurtained