the contradictory impulses of
her malady, had now departed utterly. The joys of a landed proprietor
mounted into the head of Sir Franks. He was up early the next morning,
and he and Harry walked over a good bit of the ground before breakfast.
Sir Franks meditated making it entail, and favoured Harry with a lecture
on the duty of his shaping the course of his conduct at once after the
model of the landed gentry generally.

'And you may think yourself lucky to come into that catalogue--the son of
a younger son!' said Sir Franks, tapping Mr. Harry's shoulder. Harry also
began to enjoy the look and smell of land. At the breakfast, which,
though early, was well attended, Harry spoke of the adviseability of
felling timber here, planting there, and so forth, after the model his
father held up. Sir Franks nodded approval of his interest in the estate,
but reserved his opinion on matters of detail.

'All I beg of you is,' said Lady Jocelyn, 'that you won't let us have
turnips within the circuit of a mile'; which was obligingly promised.

The morning letters were delivered and opened with the customary
calmness.

'Letter from old George,' Harry sings out, and buzzes over a few lines.
'Halloa!--Hum!' He was going to make a communication, but catching sight
of Caroline, tossed the letter over to Ferdinand, who read it and tossed
it back with the comment of a careless face.

'Read it, Rosey?' says Harry, smiling bluntly.

Rather to his surprise, Rose took the letter. Study her eyes if you wish
to gauge the potency of one strong dose of ridicule on an ingenuous young
heart. She read that Mr. George Uplift had met 'our friend Mr. Snip'
riding, by moonlight, on the road to Beckley. That great orbed night of
their deep tender love flashed luminously through her frame, storming at
the base epithet by which her lover was mentioned, flooding grandly over
the ignominies cast on him by the world. She met the world, as it were,
in a death-grapple; she matched the living heroic youth she felt him to
be, with that dead wooden image of him which it thrust before her. Her
heart stood up singing like a craven who sees the tide of victory setting
toward him. But this passed beneath her eyelids. When her eyes were
lifted, Ferdinand could have discovered nothing in them to complain of,
had his suspicions been light to raise: nor could Mrs. Shorne perceive
that there was the opening for a shrewd bodkin-thrust. Rose had got a
mask at last: her co