een discussed since John Ball's return from
London. Jack, the eldest son, was not at home, and the three girls
who came next to Jack dined with their father and grandfather. To
them Margaret endeavoured to talk easily, but she failed. They had
never been favourites with her as Jack was, and, on this occasion,
she could get very little from them that was satisfactory to her.
John Ball was courteous to her, but he was very silent throughout the
whole evening. Her aunt showed her displeasure by not speaking to
her, or speaking barely with a word. Her uncle, of whose voice she
was always in fear, seemed to be more cross, and when he did speak,
more sarcastic than ever. He asked her whether she intended to go
back to Littlebath.

"I think not," said she.

"Then that has been a failure, I suppose," said the old man.

"Everything is a failure, I think," said she, with tears in her eyes.

This was in the drawing-room, and immediately her cousin John came
and sat by her. He came and sat there, as though he had intended
to speak to her; but he went away again in a minute or two without
having uttered a word. Things went on in the same way till they
moved off to bed, and then the formal adieus for the night were made
with a coldness that amounted, on the part of Lady Ball, almost to
inhospitality.

"Good-night, Margaret," she said, as she just put out the tip of her
finger.

"Good-night, my dear," said Sir John. "I don't know what's the matter
with you, but you look as though you'd been doing something that you
were ashamed of."

Lady Ball was altogether injudicious in her treatment of her niece.
As to Sir John, it made probably very little difference. Miss
Mackenzie had perceived, when she first came to the Cedars, that he
was a cross old man, and that he had to be endured as such by any one
who chose to go into that house. But she had depended on Lady Ball
for kindness of manner, and had been tempted to repeat her visits to
the house because her aunt had, after her fashion, been gracious to
her. But now there was rising in her breast a feeling that she had
better leave the Cedars as soon as she could shake the dust off her
feet, and see nothing more of the Balls. Even the Rubb connection
seemed to her to be better than the Ball connection, and less
exaggerated in its greediness. Were it not for her cousin John, she
would have resolved to go on the morrow. She would have faced the
indignation of her aunt, and the cuttin