hy should you wish that? There is not so much here to amuse me that
you should begrudge me a stray visitor."

"I don't think that I grudge you anything in the way of pleasure,
my dear; but still he should not have come. My Lord, if he knew it,
would be angry."

"Then let him be angry. Papa does not do so much for me that I am
bound to think of him at every turn."

"But I am,--or rather I am bound to think of myself, if I take his
bread."

"Bread!"

"Well;--I do take his bread, and I take it on the understanding that
I will be to you what a mother might be,--or an aunt."

"Well,--and if so! Had I a mother living would not Frank Tregear
have come to visit her, and in visiting her, would he not have seen
me,--and should we not have walked out together?"

"Not after all that has come and gone."

"But you are not a mother nor yet an aunt, and you have to do just
what I tell you. And don't I know that you trust me in all things?
And am I not trustworthy?"

"I think you are trustworthy."

"I know what my duty is and I mean to do it. No one shall ever have
to say of me that I have given way to self-indulgence. I couldn't
help his coming, you know."

That same night, after Miss Cassewary had gone to bed, when the moon
was high in the heavens and the world around her was all asleep, Lady
Mabel again wandered out to the lake, and again seated herself on the
same rock, and there she sat thinking of her past life and trying to
think of that before her. It is so much easier to think of the past
than of the future,--to remember what has been than to resolve what
shall be! She had reminded him of the offer which he had made and
repeated to her more than once,--to share with her all his chances in
life. There would have been almost no income for them. All the world
would have been against her. She would have caused his ruin. Her
light on the matter had been so clear that it had not taken her very
long to decide that such a thing must not be thought of. She had at
last been quite stern in her decision.

Now she was broken-hearted because she found that he had left her
in very truth. Oh yes;--she would marry the boy, if she could so
arrange. Since that meeting at Richmond he had sent her the ring
reset. She was to meet him down in Scotland within a week or two from
the present time. Mrs. Montacute Jones had managed that. He had all
but offered to her a second time at Richmond. But all that would not
serve to make her happ